A Witness

ahh...

2009-08-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

In summary...

Block leave's over. BSLC a thing of the past. ASLC begins tomorrow. SDYD was good. Michelle T has just left for US to continue her studies.

ahh...
Block leave - it ended WAY TOO EARLY
BSLC - after finding out i was posted to ASLC, i started to miss BSLC
ASLC - not looking forward to having to adjust all over again, i just wanna settle in one place and i'm not too sure if i can handle the demands needed to pass the course
SDYD - tiring, it was challenging but good time for renewal and once again reminded me to put Christ at my centre
Michelle - i'm praying that God blesses her and her family as she spends the next 4 years studying in US, Cornerstone's not gonna seem complete for a while and we're already missing her.
Law - i'm not too sure if i can handle law now, i still have 2 years to think about it though

Tonight doesn't feel good at all, knowing that i'm going in tomorrow and worrying about it even though i dun want to. Knowing that i should be enjoying this time with my family too. ahh...

Dear Lord,
I thank You for all Your blessings. For the family I have, for the protection You have offered us thus far, for Cornerstone. I thank You for the gift of my life but I need you more than ever right now. I'm tired, I'm losing my focus on You, I'm anxious about the future. Give me faith once again that I might have the courage and strength to face the challenges ahead. Be the lamp unto my feet Lord. Amen.

2nd last week!

2009-08-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

WEEK 7 OF BSLC!!!

Exercise Wanderer (Tekong) on tuesday.
Exercise Grandslam (also Tekong) from wednesday to friday.
National Education 28km Route March (Mainland) on sunday.

After these 3 events... POP!!! One week block leave if I'm not wrong :D

However...
- Michelle T's going overseas to study
- Liselle's going overseas to study

Hmm.

Hmm..

Hmmm...

A phrase that keeps coming to mind since the previous week - "Creator or creation?"

I'm not really sure why it does though.

ok. this probably doesn't make any sense to anyone other than me. oh wells.

i'm having a sian feeling. that's not good. sian means bored. bored means purposeless. purposelessness means i've been neglecting God. this shouldn't be happening. i don't want that to be happening.

Dear Lord, be my guide. Be my shepherd. Be my shield. Be my refuge. Be my centre. Be behind me. Be before me. Be next to me. Be in me.

James out.

3 weeks Outfield

2009-07-19T06:09:00.001-07:00

... that's not too good... BUT on the other hand, i'm looking forward to finishing BSLC! just 4 more weeks to go!

it's been GREAT these few weeks i should say

i have so many upcoming church stuff. i'm glad but also can't help feeling it's a bit too much.

HAPPY BELATED 19th BIRTHDAY NICOLE!

BLUE MOO once again! and it was cool LISELLE!

PS1: Someone told me not to say that someone told me to update my blog.
PS2: I got competition from 2 other people (LOL!!) so have to 'up' the stakes. (hahhahaaha)

UPDATE!

2009-06-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

k. i dun think anyone reads my blog anymore cuz it's dead with the occasional 'heartbeat' like this post right here now.

Major things in my life at the moment:
1. I'm STILL in army. Specifically Basic Section Leader Course (BSLC) in School of Infantry Specialists (SISPEC) for those who do not know. Many of my friends in Quebec from BMTC are also now with me in Echo company so that's a blessing. I can't help but feel grateful to GOD and those who have supported and still continues to support me all the way. Especially to Cornerstone. Haha.

2. I'm currently reading a book by C.S. Lewis called The Problem Of Pain having finished another of his books The Screwtape Letters earlier. Both books are FULL of insights, lots of input that also serve as an opportunity for personal reflection. Oh, I also finished reading a book called Surprised By The Truth 2 prepared by Patrick Madrid, a Catholic Apologist. The book's basically a compilation of TESTIMONIES given by converts (not only religious conversion but also a conversion of the heart). I have to say it brought back some of the 'fire' that was slowly dying in army and I'm grateful to GOD once again for giving me signs that I was drifting.

3. I find computer games rather meaningless nowadays. I suppose that's a good thing. Somehow time in the army served one purpose, it made me (or at least it's making me) treasure my time outside of army. I find great JOY spending time with my family, with Michelle and Cornerstone especially. It all just feels... Right. I find God in these relationships. I do think that the challenge I face now is to see God in other relationships - with my platoon mates and other people around me.

4. I injured myself recently on Passing Out Parade day in BMT a few weeks ago and it's affecting me now. Or rather, it's affecting my training. I'm a tad bit worried about what the future might hold for me. I hope I do not get OOCed (Out Of Course) because that would mean I have to recourse later on WITHOUT the friends I have with me now.

5. I'm praying for my dad's recovery.

6. Coming Saturday is Sports day and Family Visit day. Which therefore means booking out on saturday again... Well at least we only have to book in Sunday night. In fact, I'm going to book in soon. Have to be back at camp by 2230 tonight. Just went to see Transformers with a few friends and Michelle.

Dear Lord,
I thank You for all that You've blessed me with this past week. I'm tired and I often wonder what You have in store for me. When things get tough, I hope You will remind me that I'm going through all this so that I might be a better child of Yours. Sensitize me to all my complaints, make me aware of my whinings. Reveal to me all the things You have blessed me with so that I can continue praising and thanking You even when I don't feel like it. Amen.

James out.

Happy Birthday Michelle!

2009-05-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

yup yup. hope it was a happy and blessed 2 days for you. hehe.

A Memorable Day

2009-04-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

yup :) tt's wat it was.

the CAT

2009-03-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

i said i'll post bout it and so i will...

One day, the Youth in Church of St. Francis Xavier had a bible sharing session. The sharing group was small as a number of the usual people were off with Father Brian to climb Mount Kinabalu on holiday. Despite the smaller turn out, it was a good bible sharing session... For the Cornerstone community members that were there in any case.

And so Aloysius, Simeon, Michelle P, Gwendoline and James made their way home. Aloysius, Michelle and James decided to walk back as they usually do. The night was beautiful but it was getting late. Anyway, Aloysius and Michelle talked most of the way while James was having some trouble with his nose. He was listening to the conversation though. As the trio neared Michelle's place (a condominium called... umm I can't remember), they came across two cats. One a stray, lying on a grass patch and the other a domestic cat sitting on the pavement. They knew it was someone's pet because it had a red collar on it's neck. The pair looked very curious indeed for they were staring at each other in complete silence and stillness. Thus the trio decided to go around the cats so as not to disturb the pair. It didn't work.

The domestic cat (let's call it Kitty to make it easier) Kitty was shocked out of it's staring competition and thought to itself, gee these people look good... perhaps I should follow them. And so it did.

Michelle didn't like to be near animals and that was an understatement. She was afraid of being near them. Of course Kitty freaked her out quite badly. Aloysius and James (her friends in ordinary clothes) had to 'protect' her from Kitty. Kitty looked a tad bit hurt by that but still continued following the trio anyway. The trio were confused, "what in the world is the cat doing following us?!? They asked each other.

They even tested to see if the cat did indeed follow them by turning around and walking in the opposite direction. Lo and behold, Kitty patiently sat down and waited for the trio to come back again. Kitty must have thought to herself, Gosh this will be a long night. I want to find my way back home but I want some company too, these 3 gorgeous people aren't going to make this easy I suppose.

Eventually, Michelle managed to escape from the 'evil clutches' of Kitty (she was brown and white by the way), leaving just James and Aloysius to fend for themselves! Oh no!

In any case, James said "wow, I'm so gonna blog bout this. This is so cool. Let me take three videos and some pictures!" And just as he said he was going to do, he did.

Kitty did eventually follow the duo to the bus stop opposite James' house and waited with Aloysius for his bus.

That as they say is that. What happened to Kitty after the duo went home... Well, that is another story for another time (not like I know what did happen to Kitty in the end anyway).

PS: 'Asking the girl', they treat it as a compliment says a female friend. A male friend replies and says no guy actually thinks making the first move is a compliment. Well, both are right really. Making the first move is indeed a compliment since it does show that the girl has certain qualities that 'made' the guy decide to make it in the first place. The guy doesn't think of it as a compliment is also quite true I guess.

In actual fact, making that first move is such a HUGE compliment and it shouldn't even be considered a compliment but something more than that. So much so that many a times, girls don't even know how deep that actually is. To be willing to be be the one facing rejection so that the girl doesn't have to, that is what it truly is. They guy is HONOURING her by taking it upon himself to be that person. Girls might argue that it is the guy's duty and it is just wrong for the girl to make the first move (although not unheard of) just because it is. Honouring the girl is what it actually is all about. Surely the guy must see something in the girl if she is worth facing a possible rejection for right? It is indeed a compliment but more than just that.

The PS was just to show that I was listening that night. hehe...

Evangelisation Talk on Sunday and Mission Talk at Risen Christ on Monday

2009-03-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

OOh, my longest title Yet. (i doubt the post will be long though)

Anyway, that was cool! I AM SO PROUD OF THE STONERS! (Cornerstone ppl for those who have no idea what I'm talking about... wait... if you don't already know who stoners refer to... then you would probably STILL have no idea who Cornerstone ppl are LOL... and so... I'll ignore you ppl... hehe Joking!)

We are SO on fire now. For so long we've been 'stagnant' and really not contributing much to the Church. But now... we're off to a wonderful start. PPL are going like WOW! Cornerstone's stepping up AND setting the bar high! OF COURSE! THAT COULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT ONE PERSON... the MOST important person! JESUS! YEAH! I'm PROUD TO SAY THAT! We have God to thank for so much, we really do. It is SO sad that we don't show our appreciation for all that He has given us often.

Now comes our next challenge... even more guys enlisting in the next month. Can we keep this flame burning? Nicole's away for a month in China too btw.

Oh dearest Father, thank you for being with me all through my life whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. Thank you for revealing more and more of yourself to me as the days pass, especially this past month. I have come to love you more and more each passing day. May I love you more as I learn more about you in the days to come. May I learn more about you as I love you more. O Lord, put in me a desire to share about you to those around me that they too might be able to rest in your loving embrace. By the death of your own begotten Son, you showed us how much you loved us, with a love that is far greater than any other. O Jesus, you who did not deserve to die took on the penalty of death we faced because of Sin so that we might live. And so I am YOUR Child Lord. I give you all my brokeness, for that is all I can offer. Help me love just as you loved me. Amen.

KL Trip!

2009-03-25T06:55:00.000-07:00

Long story short, Ernest, Michelle and myself went to KL to visit Sam :p

To make the long story short longer... some highlights (off the top of my head)
1. FOOD was good (ooh, they have A&W!!!)
2. Staying up late to watch TV and sing (?!?)
3. Twin Towers and KLCC
4. NOT being able to see fireflies (doesn't matter cuz the company was wat's impt)
5. Foot REFLEXOLOGY LOL
6. CHIONGING FOR THE AIRPLANE (like Amazing Race) and managing to get on it 3 mins before gate closed (PHEW!!)
7. CAMWHORING - acting cute cuz forced by SOME ppl
8. taking loads of unglam shots of MICHELLE! (ALL ON FACEBOOK! GO CHECK!)
9. Getting irritated with some of the taxi drivers but not with others.
10. Buying loads of fish 'crackers' back to Singapore

To make the longer version of the long story cut short longer... I'll elaborate on a few points :p

9. TAXIs sooooo irrittating! especially when they keep trying to con us! eeeeeeeeee. but got some nice uncles la, those tt didn't try to con us. OH and 3 of them talked to me in either malay, dialect and some other language. hehe I can pass off as Chinese AND Malay. One was talking bout it being so easy to burn another person's car without the person not knowing what hit him. "buy one i burn one". hehe. He was teaching us moral lesson - dun anyhow do stupid things, you might be able to do anything you want today but u might piss some people off and they could take away that 'freedom' from you another day. So think before you act. lol. Words Of Wisdom...
Ooh, another taxi, the speed meter was spoilt so we didn't know how fast we went. Another taxi drove faster than all the motorcycles and was moving at around 90-100kmph half the time. :p so fun.

6. OMGosh! TT WAS NERVEWRECKING! WE ALMOST FRIGGIN' MISSED THE PLANE! We took the 3pm bus from Sentral to the airport (thought it would take one hour) but we arrived at 4.20-4.35pm around there. We were supposed to be there at 4pm. We rushed like siao, got ppl cut queue, and there was this boy who kept scolding his mother for cutting other people's queue (he has principle! kudos to you whoever you are) and said tt tt was y he gets more stress on holidays than spending a week studying for exams. LOL! we chionged and chionged... mich and ernie checked in their luggage. I didn't. So i sprinted with them with a very heavy and bulky bag. SIAN! Our hearts were racing like horses down a race track. hahaha. THAT WAS SO THRILLING but i NEVER want to experience that again.

1. Sam brought us to loads of places. So we ate. and ate. and ate. and ate some more. Plus for us Singaporeans, the food was SO MUCH CHEAPER! We could eat 2 and 2/5 portions more for the same price (PPP). WOW LOR! A&W! Wendy's! KFC! ALL the local FOOD! FANTASTIC!

5. yeah... they wanted to try Foot Reflexology. Interesting experience :p a bit painful at some parts only. we did it after having Bak Kut Teh (malaysian style) on the last day. not too bad la.

GO VISIT FACEBOOK for the Pictures!!!! and BERT! That was ME, JAMES! NOT CHRISTOPHER!!!!!

A Level Results :)

2009-03-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

Here's what I got...
GP - B (8.75/10)
Physics - A (20/20)
Chemistry - A (20/20)
Mathematics - B (8.75/10)
Economics - A (20/20)
Project Work - A (10/10)

University Entrance Score (UES) - 87.5 (out of 90)

Congrats to everyone! A levels are officially HISTORY!

I felt fantastic! It wasn't because of my results though :) :) :)

Outings, no job, no School of Witness

2008-12-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

umm... i dun really know why i'm writing this cuz the title kinda says it all. too lazy to look for job, not completely willing to once again step out of the comfort, by comfort i mean slacking around not doing anything productive, zone. going overseas 2 more times be4 NS! which means even if i Do get a job... it'll be kinda weird and also, i'll miss way too much of School of Witness for it to be... feasible (for lack of a better word).

hmm... lately what have i been up to? (since OH SO MANY of u are OH SO INTERESTED... lol... right...) Atlantica Online which i might possibly be addicted to... reading a number of books... went New Zealand... (chances are if u're reading my blog... u would have already known tt) and of course a few outings here and there. btw, despite all the excu... uh hum... i mean reasons why i don... i mean cannot have, a job... i still feel like a bloody (can't help bout the bloody part, eczema sucks big time...) slacker not doing anything productive. friends are getting jobs, some taking Highway Code, some taking SAT I which is needed for some scholarships, some are taking the pschometric test thingy which i'm Supposed to be Trying to take (i'm supposed to be working REALLY HARD now so that i can get a scholarship but like i always say... there's always tomorrow. fine. i never say that. but i do think it quite often. procrastination's my middle name lol). all of which are making me very irritable, emo at times... who am i kidding? that's my normal self hahaha...

sorry to those reading this post right now. i'm typing this while still high, or rather, wide from eating way too much. chomp chomp must have gotten it's name from people like mat, bert, joel and myself. if i counted correctly we ate 7 courses before heading to serangoon market for another 2 courses. i'll try to list everything we ate in order, correct me if i'm wrong u 3. we ate from 7 to 11 btw.

CHOMP CHOMP
1(i). Rojak - waiting for mat and joel to arrive (both of whom came REALLY LATE)
(ii). Sugarcane juice - bert got it cuz he was thirsty... duh
2. 15 Chicken wings
3. Oyster Ommelette
4(i). BBQ Stingray
(ii). Sugarcane juice, ice lemon tea - mat and myself respectively cuz darn spicy
5. Satay
6. Hokkien Mee
7. Fried carrot cake (white)

SERANGOON GARDEN MARKET
8(i). Fried carrot cake (black)
(ii). Heineken, water chestnut drink - joel/mat and me respectively
9. 10 Chicken wings - yeah, again
10. Ice Kachang

yeah, then we gave up cuz no more money... :( lol...
walk around then went back home...

now... nite!! hahahaaha... weird...

wat's the deal with rejection?

2008-11-30T07:11:00.000-08:00

i initially wanted to post alot of the thoughts that ran through my head these few days... insightful thoughts... but cuz i'm tired i'm gonna compress them into one line summaries for each one. the insightful ones are bolded like this three words.

1. rejection is painful and although one may be good at hiding the pain, it doesn't mean that one doesn't feel it.
2. rejection causes one to think of stupid stuff (NOT SUICIDE in case anyone gets the wrong idea) like the things u hate about urself and this is aggravated by being in the presence of people who have the traits one desires.
3. rejection usually causes more pain than it should cuz of hopes being shattered and plans for the future being utterly destroyed.
4. rejection and the feelings that follow it are often amplified in the presence of people who remind u of the rejection.
5. rejection humbles u and definitely deflates ur ego, no matter whose it might be.
6. rejection is made worse if there is no one whom u think can really be your support in those situations(sad though it appears).
7. rejection is bad enough and you dun have to read romance novels or listen to sad/love songs to make it even more terrible.
8. rejection often makes one ask 'why?'
9. rejection usually leads to self pity which can be addictive.
10. rejection by one person is bad enough... imagine what GOD has to go through each day...

sidetracking...
"Are you WEAK enough to be like JESUS?"
Yes... weak and not strong... curious no? In one of the articles i read in the Catholic news quite a few weeks ago by a certain Father Ronald Rolheiser (his articles are terribly insightful)... he referred to that question.

i'm really tired and so... i'll continue about tt article another day... tmr's cjc's prom btw.

twilight

2008-11-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

darn i was hoping for the book withOUT the movie picture as the cover, the one that was out BEFORE the movie. it says fiction on the spine but it's really a romance/mystery novel thingy. i hav to admit it took me quite a while to get past the first few pages cuz i was distracted by my own thoughts.

anyway, a paragraph struck me...

"Of course he wasn't interested in me, I thought angrily, my eyes stinging - a delayed reaction to the onions. I wasn't interesting. And he was. Interesting... and brilliant... and mysterious... and perfect... and beautiful... and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand."

for some strange reason, i couldn't help but feel drawn to this few... well, many words. ok... fine... it isn't really strange. i guess i can relate to that. ooh, the onions part made it cooler, reminded me of penang trip - 'the-onion-to-the-eyes-so-that-we-tear-on-prom' suggestion that sam and i were talking about. hahaha. :P

the book's quite good i suppose, at least so far. michelle asked me to read slower to while away the time but i dun think thats possible. seriously. it was honestly quite hard for me to put down the book so that i could post this before i forgot what i wanted to post.

Back from Penang Trip

2008-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

Penang Trip - 20th to 23rd November 2008, after our A's, some still having A's :P

One word summary for each day...
Day 1 - Exciting
Day 2 - Stunned
Day 3 - Fun
Day 4 - Memories

First things first, a huge thanks to everyone for making this trip such an enjoyable one just by being yourselves. Special thanks to Christopher and David who really put in a lot of time and effort to help us organise, Samantha for her 'knowledge' about penang ( :) ) and Martin for being a wonderful PCCG (Pastoral Care Councillor something).

Day 1 - Exciting
Wow, our first trip overseas together as classmates. How cool is that? What should we expect? Can we be responsible without the presence of adults? How much are we going to enjoy ourselves?

The day was mildly tiring, loads of walking though it was definitely quite fun. Much more than the usual trips with family, especially so without having all those 'planned activities' and 'sight-seeing'. This was purely exploration which I might add, is very refreshing for a change.

Day 2 - Stunned

Food was good, company was good. What else could one wish for? Well... I do have something in mind. THAT thing weighed on my mind the entire day though I tried to hide it. It is NOT my infected toe (which prevented me from participating in a few once in a lifetime activities the rest took part in) for those who are speculating. Parasailing, Banana Boating, Jet Skiing... All I had was a frisbee with no one to play with, loads of bags I had to take care of, cameras which needed to be used (to capture memories that were actually quite redundant since they would be engraved in everyone's minds) and a lot of time to recover from... ...

Why? Does it really have to be that way? A sinking feeling slowly began to fill me. There was no one I could turn to... alone. Not physically but in almost every other way. I prayed that night, I prayed that I may be given the strength to understand and not seek to be understood, no matter what I was going through. A sense of relief, a sense of great disappointment and the feeling of hopes being shattered, a sense of impatience, a sense of being envious, a pain that transcends that of the body and a sense of disorientation and confusion.

Drinks were good, company was good. I'm not too sure about the day though.

Day 3 - Fun
Free and easy. Sam, Ernest, Mich, Hubert and myself... wet markets looking for frogs... food... shopping... arcade... great time... seafood restaurant... back to the bar again later at night (4 of us)... Most fun day admittedly. Hope it was good for the other group too.
There were some points when I became rather agitated (managed not to show)... but still a wonderful day.

Day 4 - Memories
Ummm... we went back. What more can I say other than it was memorable. The experiences from this trip are now etched in my brain. Permanently I believe. Both the scars and the laughter.

It's definitely been a rollercoaster ride for me. To those who know what I'm refering to... good for you. To those who do not... these few sentences do not exist in your head. Repeat after me... "i will NOT notice these few sentences". Tremendous joy a moment and great despair the next moment.

The Lord is my shepherd and there is nothing I shall want...

:( ?

2008-11-23T04:56:00.000-08:00

"For friendship to remain, unfortunately so must the pain. How doth one bear the see, the people who do remind me of thee. When love be unrequited, oh God give me the strength required. To be a friend and brother, rather than a lover"

lawyers...

2008-10-03T23:09:00.000-07:00

Once again... an email from someone tt i jus had to share with u guys... LOL

Dedicated to all the silly and sometimes not so young lawyers.

These are from a book called 'Disorder in the American Courts,' and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters - who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. Don't miss the last one!!

____________________________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?

WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

____________________________________________________________

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?

WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?

WITNESS: I forget.

ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?

WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'

ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?

WITNESS: My name is Susan!

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo?

WITNESS: We both do.

ATTORNEY: Voodoo?

WITNESS: We do.

ATTORNEY: You do?

WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?

WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-one-year-old, how old is he?

WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one.

________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?

WITNESS: Are you shitt'in me?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?

WITNESS: Uh.... I was gett'in laid!

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?

WITNESS: Yes.

ATTORNEY: How many were boys?

WITNESS: None.

ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

WITNESS: Are you kidding? Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?

WITNESS: By death.

ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

WITNESS: Now, whose death do you suppose terminated it?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?

WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.

ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?

WITNESS: Guess.

_____________________________________

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?

WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?

WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that?

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?

WITNESS: Oral.

______________________________________

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?

WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.

ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?

WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table, wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!

____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________

--- And the best for last: ---

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

YAY!

2008-09-20T23:34:00.000-07:00

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

LOL. Jus a little sumthing. I just finishedreading J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Children of Hurin". Cool shit story.

Update!

2008-09-19T06:02:00.000-07:00

Jason Mraz - Love For A Child
There's a picture on my kitchen wall
Looks like Jesus and his friends involved
There's a party getting started in the yard
There's a couple getting steamy in the car parked in the drive
Was I too young to see this with my eyes?

By the pool last night, apparently
The chemicals weren't mixed properly
You hit your head and then forgot your name
And then you woke up at the bottom by the drain
And now your altitude and memory's a shame

What about taking this empty cup and filling it up
With a little bit more of innocence
I haven't had enough, it's probably because when you're young
It's okay to be easily ignored
I like to believe it was all about love for a child

And when the house was left in shambles
Who was there to handle all the broken bits of glass
Was it mom who put my dad out on his ass or the other way around
Well I'm far too old to care about that now

What about taking this empty cup and filling it up
With a little bit more of innocence
I haven't had enough, it's probably because when you're young
It's okay to be easily ignored
I'd like to believe it was all about love for a child

It's kinda nice to work the floor since the divorce
I've been enjoying both my Christmases and my birthday cakes
And taking drugs and making love at far too young an age
And they never check to see my grades
What a fool I'd be to start complaining now

What about taking this empty cup and filling it up
With a little bit more of innocence
I haven't had enough, it's probably because when you're young
It's okay to be easily ignored
I'd love to believe it's all about love for a child

It was all about love...

AN UPDATE for CJC PRELIMS 2008!!

GP : ??% (pretty much screwed for the essay... i jus had a nightmare bout it yesterday, i hate the pressure...)

Phy : P1-26/40; P2-34/60; P3-??/80; total-??% (not wat i hoped at all)

Chem : P1-30/40; P2-40/60; P3-??/80; total-??% (slightly and pleasantly surprised but anything can happen cuz of paper 3 which i might add, i've never gotten >40/80)

Math : 69% (a mark no one wants to get... PLUS... i got an ans correct but i cancelled it cuz i thought it was wrong and left it blank... that cost me an A... wah... almost on honour roll for the first time...)

Econ : CSQ1-14/30; CSQ2-20/30; Essay1-10/25; Essay2-11/25; Essay3-14/25; total-51% (fantastic... just great... not unexpected though... i didn't conc on econs at all and i COMPLETELY regret that...)

I won't complain anymore though... for obvious reasons.

AND OMG!! the coolest shit. Chem paper 2 initially got 34/60. Then mark scheme changed. I got an additional 3 marks, then another 1, then another 1 which makes 5. Then i tried my luck with another question... got another mark :) :) :)!!! GREAT BIG THNX TO GOD! hehe.

MUSIC!!

2008-09-11T05:22:00.000-07:00

hahaha... i'm listening to so many songs now...
1. Paramore - all the songs from All We Know Is Falling album
2. Michael Jackson - Bad, Thriller, Beat It, Smooth Criminal (LOL)
3. Metallica - One, Orion, For Whom The Bell Tolls
4. AFI - Miss Murder
5. Matchbook Romance - Monsters
6. Miley Cyrus - See You Again
7. Weezer - Buddy holly
8. 30 Seconds To Mars - From Yesterday, A Beautiful Lie, Capricorn
9. Rodrigo y Gabriela (means Rodrigo and Gabriela in Spanish) - 2 covers - Stairway to Heaven and Orion
10. Songs from August Rush (movie related to music, guitars especially)
11. Digimon songs namely Butter-Fly and Brave Heart
12. DK - Showstopper
13. Estelle feat. Kanye West - American Boy
14. Ne Yo - Closer
15. Kat DeLuna feat. Elephant Man - Whine Up
16. Jason Mraz's new album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
17. Colbie Caillat's new album Coco
18. Nightwish - Moondance (genre-symphonic power metal)
19. Sweet - Ballroom Blitz (genre-glam rock)
20. Santana feat. Chad Kroeger - Into The Night
21. Sugarcult - Memory
22. The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian
... ... ...

etc

Yup. A whole weird mix of genres. lol. NUTS! and FRUITS! Songs to last a week or two. HAHAHA! songs on class blog have such 'wonderful' taste la. lol... at least westlife's flying without wings ain't tt bad, old school boy band kinda song. can live with tt :).

Last paper tomorrow for PRELIMS!! YEAH!! Physics mcq lol. All the way to school for 1 hour. LOL.

Someone just sent me this!

2008-09-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

Someone just emailed me this. It's really good!!

By Adrian Tan, a litigator at Drew & Napier LLC, Singapore and author of The Teenage Textbook.

'Life and How to Survive It'

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address.

It's a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you've already won her heart, you don't need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times.

Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You're done learning.

You've probably been told the big lie that 'Learning is a lifelong process' and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters' degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don't you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they're wrong.

The bad news is that you don't need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You're in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I'm here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There's very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you'll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they're 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn't meet their life expectancy.

I'm here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it's calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don't need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life's a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don't expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term 'Karoshi', which means death from overwork. That's the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there's nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There's a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are 'making a living'. No, they're not. They're dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan 'Arbeit macht frei' was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons:
you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn't do that, I would've been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don't imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I'll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession.
Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don't, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I'm not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It's not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it's often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one's own convictions.

It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn't say 'be loved'. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one's looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation.

That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We've taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason.

Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn't happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don't, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don't work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You're going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there's no life expectancy.

HAHA RANDOM POETRY SMSes

2008-09-06T05:47:00.000-07:00

it is as the title suggests. random poetry messaging between lis and myself hahaha.

after mass... while sitting in front of church waiting for my parents... i wrote this (all on phone). this isn't exactly a poem but i found it funny :P

In quiet solitude,
i sat on the steps,
at the entrance of a small little church.
i saw the world pass me by,
ever so slowly,
ever so peacefully.

There was nothing,
nothing to disturb this rare silence,
no tv, no cars, no barking.

And out of nowhere comes a voice,
deep and with much authority.
Why are you not inside?

I nervously replied...
that's because i just came out. :P

lol. so anticlimax (at least it looked so on sms)

Lis replied with this...

Is he Or is she?
My eyes are fogged up
No wait, everything else around is clear
Yet that blur thing there -
male, female?
miss, mister?
Human?

Lines are thin, maybe even fading,
but somehow bold when place together.
Open yet tight,
close yet bursting,
it's not monochrome for sure.

Next day, i replied with this. Deciding whether or not to go mass.

Dilemma!
As the bus passes my stop.
I couldn't help but wonder.
Did i make th right choice?
Ahead of me lies gloomy weather,
beyond that a hopeful matter.
It is too late now,
i have chosen what i have,
done what i thought i should.
An inconvenience first for something better.

She replied with this.

It's never too late:
To make up for what's been done.
To make up for what's been lost.
To make up for what's been said.
To make up for what's been thought.
To start doing it weel.
To start finding your way.
To start saying what's right.
To start thinking for the better.

Lol.

And to beat me by one, she sent another.

As the train moves on,
the calmness of the night fills the carriage.
Protected from the dangers of the outside world.
I sit listening to the *ballroom blitz.
Then a sudden burst of air fills the place.
Within seconds, the voice announces 'door closing'
and only a beeping sound remains.

*note: BALLROOM BLITZ IS A SUPER COOL SONG!!! It's from the 1970s, of a genre known as 'Glam Rock' (how cool is that man?) and is by a band called Sweet. Check out on Youtube.

HAHA.I realise i write more emo, gloomy stuff. Lis writes more random positive stuff. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I've gone nuts.

Poetry in Motion!!

2008-08-31T01:17:00.000-07:00

lol. after reading marcus' blog, i went to look around and voila, here's wat i found :P oh and btw, i thought of tt response to bert's msn nic after looking at the poem. hahaha. well... it fits! and... one of my previous posts contains part of the second last stanza.

Will You Come

Never ending nights
Somewhere between wakefulness and dreams
Conversations are replayed and they never cease to pry
Deep into the inner recesses of the mind

Floating amidst the dark abyss
Questions that I hate but are definitely mine
Should I? What if? Can it?

Haunting scenes that might be
Joyous ones that I hope to see
Surreal depictions of what could possibly come
And images of things I do shun

When the sun brightens and I awaken
Consciousness always brings with it
A certain sense that I am not mistaken…
But never more than just a bit

The timing is bad
Indecision makes it worse
And yet the question remains
Will you come?

I did dare hope
And I boldly declare
That you would be to me
More than just a friend

After which... i also found out Lis also used to write poetry.
One about the life of a guitar, one bout a strange day and another bout telelvision.

haha so random.

and here's another one i jus found today. i wrote it during one of the RE lessons last year. Nuts right?

Aren't We Stupid

So many seem to have so much
BUT always want more
So many seem to have so little
AND always want more
So few seem to have so much
AND do not thirst for more
So few seem to have so little
BUT do not thirst for more
I really do wonder who deserves our respect the most

We have what we need
We want what we don't
We search all our lives for true joy
Never realising knowledge is the key
The plain awareness that everything we need
is already ours

How oft have we
ignored the little graces God has given us

Simple pleasures, a passing smile,
nature's beauty, wondrous call,
golden silence, joyous laughter...
How much have we missed
in our ignorance and our worries
We see all that is lacking
we miss all that isn't

Lol. Jus thought i'd share them cuz i do believe i'll probably lose them.

and here's another thing written on the paper i found...

Stupid people say they're good
Cowards say they're not
Smart people...
they just don't say anything. :)

God BLESS!!

less sian...

2008-08-20T08:06:00.000-07:00

yup...
i think the title kinda sums it up :P

hahahaha.
...
... that's it
...
...
... no seriously
...
... REALLY
...
... OMG
...
...
...
... LOL
...
...
...
... u still reading?!?!
...
...
...
... oi!
...
...
... dun understand issit?!?
...
...
...
...
...
... go study for prelims la
...
... wtheaven are u still reading this for?
...
... u might as well go read http://gabrielrodism.livejournal.com
... reallllllll hilarious
...

fine... i went for a GP Seminar with Andrew today... it was REALLY cool. 5 hours of lecture and i took more notes than the 2years i've taken GP combined. 13-14 sides of foolscap paper. Finally, someone covered topics that I was interested in. No globalisation, crime & punishment hehe.

here's what they covered...
1. Ethics of Genetic Engineering
2. Environmental Ethics
3. Ethics of Just War
4. Sexual Ethics in Modern Society
*5. Reality of Mathematics & a possible relation to Ethics

onto other stuff... i'm not as sian now. jus exaggerating the last time. ranting definitely makes one feel better. thanks lis for 'lis'tening, actually, more like reading.

love this song
KT Tunstall - Throw Me A Rope
I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you
But everything here is telling me I should be fine
So why is it so, above as below,
That I'm missing you every time

I got used to you whispering things to me into the evening
We followed the sun and its colours and left this world
It seems to me that I'm definitely
Hearing the best that I've heard

So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Cause I feel alone

And whenever you go it's like holding my breath underwater
I have to admit that I kind of like it when I do
Oh but I've got to be unconditionally
Unafraid of my days without you

So throw me a rope to hold me in place
Show me a clock for counting my days down
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Whenever I'm falling you're always behind me
Come back and find me
Cause everything's easier when you're beside me
Come back and find me
Cause I feel alone

:(

2008-08-06T03:33:00.000-07:00

HOLY DARKNESS
Holy darkness, blessed night,
heaven's answer hidden from our sight.
As we await you, O God of silence,
we embrace your holy night.

I have tried you in fires of affliction;
I have taught your soul to grieve.
In the barren soil of your loneliness,
there I will plant my seed.

It hurts to want to be the one who puts that smile on your face but never does.
Timing is bad. Indecision makes it worse. Pride is the worst.
I wonder if things are going His way?
It sure doesn't seem to be going my way.

Will He plant His seed in all of this?

There has never been such a period where I've stoned so often for such long periods of time before. I'm distracted. I'm weary. I'm sian. What's gonna happen now?

LONG overdue

2008-07-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

My sincerest apologies to those who do visit my blog once in a while for the lack of updates. Yeah. Cuz i know you guys just love to visit my blog to destress. hehe.

Anyway, i'm gonna spam some photos, at least those not similar to those on the class blog. lol. There are more pictures than words on the class blog. We're such a cam****ing class. (**** does not mean f*** but rather ****, lol... u know ***** but only got 4* since there's a -ing at the back... know wat i mean?!? lol... LOL)

Oh yeah, i now speak to you as a 'commoner', not that being a councillor made us higher than the rest (in fact, it made us lower! tt's wat so cool bout it!) I use the word commoner cuz tt's wat a few ppl have called the ex-councillors. I'm fine though although i'll miss everything bout council, even the 'saikang', cuz my sis has taken my place in council! Cool right!?!? I dun have the pics for the Council Installation (they're with my sis).

And even further back in time, we had our unofficial handing over to the juniors. LOL, my gift to Michelle was a cactus that couldn't stand upright lol.

We ended JC2 retreat yesterday. It was definitely more fun and meaningful than last year's retreat. Loved it and kudos to all who helped plan it and the facils who came down to help again and again. I wanted to say Catholic Retreat but... it was more of Religion Retreat. Dzul came to join us!! haha that was some cool shi*. i REMEMBERED everyone in my group hehe - Ian, Tim C., Alston, Christopher, Beverly, Christiana, Yahui, Audrey and Rhian! (lol she 3rd time in my grp!! so cool right?) And of course our facil Jeanette.

Hmm... other notable stuff:
1. Guitar concert (forgot the latin name Laboris Amore or Labore Amoris or sumthing lol)(Start by Depepe is so darn cool, check youtube vid)
2. Some SGSS Band/Choral Concert michelle and i went for
3. $120 haagen daaz voucher cuz the class won 2nd prize for Racial Harmony Day competition
4. Didn't go the last blue moo which was apparently really good
5. Alfresco!! Lis, Derk and I performed!! Beautiful Girl/Stand by Me and Clouds!! Guitar Hero SUPER FUN!
6. Found out Simeon can play Cliffs Of Dover OMG lol. So cool.
7. Not very good MYE results... my first S in 2 years for any subject...
8. Crazily good results for MYE... for my sis. She's on the Honour Roll!! Go see! Disgusting. Her UES score is higher than mine!! 71/80!!! i only got 65/90!! Mine's over 90 cuz of PW. SHI* she beat me even with one sub less LOL. ANyway, nice work Grace, give u chance hehe.
9. SGC completed.
10. Scholarship talk (i tagged along with Martin)
11. Thinking of Teaching. YES. Teaching. Perhaps that's y i always liked this verse... "Those who instruct others unto justice shall shine like the stars for all eternity" from the book of Daniel.
12. Taking a really long time to upload the pics...
13. Letting u guys 'enjoy' the pics lol...

GOD BLESS!

umm in response to the tag?

2008-04-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

Hello! I was tagged by liselle so here I am (:

Game rules:
A. People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blogs and replace any question they dislike with a new question formulated by themselves. Tag 8 people. Those who are tagged cannot refuse.
B. These 8 people must state who they were tagged by. You cannot tag the person who tagged you. Continue this game by sending this to 8 other people.

1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be?
Move on?

2. What will you do if you do not share the same feelings as the person who likes you?
Will have such a case ar? (lol)

3. What will your dream wedding be like?
Never thought tt far :)

4. Are you confused as to what lies ahead of you?
Not confused, just unsure. (like lis)

5. What's your ideal lover like?
umm. an INDIVIDUAL herself, interesting, someone who understands, has a sense of humour, fun to be with, someone whom i constantly think about?

6. Which is more blessed, loving someone or being loved by someone else?
I would think being loved by someone else. Having someone love u is to be blessed. Loving someone is to bless the person. I dun believe i jus came up with tt :)

7. If the person you like does not accept you, would you continue to wait for them to change their feelings?
It depends. If realistically it can really work out or there may be a chance that it may work, then perhaps. If not, (like say the person is happily attached/getting married!) then let go and move on. She's not the only one on this planet. (almost exactly like lis's answer except for the she/ he part)

8. If the person you secretly like is already attached, what would you do?
Emo a bit but get over it. (:

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy recently?
There was, the morning prayer incident but it's all good now. Nice to know some ppl are brave enough to apologize and the person has regained some of my respect.

10. What do you want most in life?
To find a purpose for my being here.

11. Is being tagged fun?
very umm... Interesting :) (refer to last post for INTERESTING THINGS)

12. If you find out that your best friend is going out with your boyfriend/girlfriend, how would you react?
goodbye to the both of them. (same as lis again i should think)

13. Who is currently the most important person to you?
God? i really dun know. how does one know anyway.

14. What kind of person do you think I am?
Really interesting, funny, intelligent and a good friend. lol.

15. Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
Married and poor. Love is priceless but not because no one's willing to give it a price. :)

16. If the person you secretly like cannot recognize you, what would you do/how would you react?
Say something. Or sms something or whatever la.

17. Would you give your all in a relationship?
Yup, i'm tt type of person. hahaha. Agree with lis though, it is a 2 way thing.

18. If you fall in love with two persons simultaneously, who would you pick?
something must be wrong, discern first be4 doing anything.

19. What type of friends do you like?
Ppl with a sense of humour? Loyal. Mature when they need to be? Ppl i can be myself with.

20. If you played a prank on someone, and he/she fell for the trick, what would you do?
LAUGH. ALOT. Brag bout it? lol

I tag:
Qinrui, Hubert, Marie... hmm not alot of ppl lol.

you've been tagged! go do it!

FINALLY RIGHT?!?! Interesting stuff.

2008-04-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

OMG so long never post already. I almost forgot my account password.

Lately... a bit of dota here and there. Loads of viwawa zany bridge. Just found out, I'm getting the SPF Bookprize Certificate on Annual Awards Ceremony day. How cool is that la. Minister Teo Chee Hean will be there too btw and there's even a citation lol. Interesting.

ROCK MUSICAL: WE WILL ROCK YOU owns. It was really (times hundred) good. Got to see Mig Ayesa in person, so cool. It was really funny. Got the CD (che... it was the london one, not singapore one). Interesting

Oh yeah, even more cool FREE CONE DAY BEN & JERRY's! Mrs Labrooy friggin pranked the ppl who went to get a cone and therefore couldn't come back in time for GP remedial (she did ALREADY prepare stuff). In the end she 'facebooked' a bit in class while we brainstormed who to call to say that SHE WAS REALLY PISSED AND EVEN SLAMMED THE DOOR WHEN SHE FOUND OUT ONLY 6 PPL IN CLASS. First up was Samantha. We figured she'll keep cool but her telling the rest will make them panic like crazy. Couldn't get through so called mandy or clarisse. Then marie. Lol, whatever it was, it was really funny. We have such a cool teacher :P. Really interesting.

School evaluation thing. I had to go for interview representing Student Leaders - SC Catholic Activities side. Quite interesting.

SIS got into council (yesterday)!! Jason jokingly said that she practically DSAed into CJC SC lol. Her entire group got in i think. Her, Tian Yu, Xavier and Natalie. Short meeting... relatively. Went to class to study but ended up talking random stuff a while with clarisse, mandy, david, michelle, chris, johan and later bert. Then went for dinner at far east plaza. Martin joined us after dance ppl who also went FEP, left. Talked more bullshit - o levels, psle, studies in general, funny stuff, a bit on ppl's character etc. Very interesting...

Clarisse,mich and myself took 132 to CJ bus stop to wait WITH clarisse who needed to change bus at that really dark, lonely, quiet, Mas Selamat bus stop (lol). We stopped there and waited WITH her... for like half a min. Her bus came straight after that lol. Mich and i then waited for 105 to go home. Talked more random stuff on the way back. Oh yeah, we got on tt nice version of 105 sbs bus. It had nice sofas but less seats also. It's always nice to talk to ppl without suaning involved. Suaning is fun but quite tiresome and boring after a while. I can think of a number of ppl who can hold a conversation without self suaning or suaning each other (like some ppl right bert? LOL). Really interesting.

Reached home quite late, everyone was asleep. Around 2330+. Well, the next day was a Public holiday after all. Labour day. And also Feast of Ascension. Saw bert and mich at 9am mass. came back did some council stuff and now typing this shit. Oh yeah! ALLLLLLLLLLL GGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FFFFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRR FARM on the coming tuesday. It's about cults. REALLLLLLLLLYYYYY INTERESTING!

From coming week onwards, i'm staying in school to study cuz go home confirm cmi one. Anyone wanna join? Library or class maybe. It'll be interesting :)

Better update

2008-03-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

Runaway by Electrico

This song's good :)

Truly Julie, in another day
You know it really isn�t far away that I�m longing to be with you
You�ll be waiting for another sun, but that�s when things begin to come undone
There�s sense that�s running in the air, and that�s the time that you should never dare
Running away you can�t pretend, up to the door and back again with me
I know
Running away it drives me wild, even someone who makes me mild like you
I know
There�s a place where eveything is free and everyone is just like you and me like i�ve never seen before
But i would never ever wanna go, to a place unless you told me so, then you said that you wanted more
There�s a sense that�s running in the air and that�s the time that you should never dare

SO many things to say, but i can't remember any of them...

2008-03-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

If i remember correctly... i had a lot to blog about but for some reason or other, i just can't remember. Well except for this one... Can't stop laughing everytime i think about it. We were heading to Physics lecture at Lt1 and we were just coming down the stairs. Lt1 was on our RIGHT. Someone whose name i will not say (to avoid embarassing him) saw a certain ummm... girl (could there have been anything else) who went past us towards our LEFT. He automatically went LEFT and i purposely shouted rather loudly OI WRONG SIDE LA YOU!! LOL. Right bert?

Some other stuff i remember. CONGRATS GRACE!!! YOU'RE IN THE BEST JC!! muahahahaha. CTs now over. I hate CTs. Whenever i'm stressed i scratch myself unknowingly and so my eczema has only gotten worse. Realised i'm drifting away from Him again. I somehow got lost in all the things around me. Things like CTs, and dota. Thankfully, session on sunday somewhat reignited quickly dying out flame. Just in time too since i need to help plan for Lenten Vigil next week. Oh yeah, i got C for chinese which is wat i usually get and so i'm not surprised. I was surprised when i found out mat didN'T get A though.

I'm going for mass one of these days. Sometime this week. I promise. Grace join COUNCIL CA!! umm wat else... oh yeah, looking forward to t14/t15 sports day and 1t14/2t14 interclass outing. So cool, a junior and senior class outing. AND my SIS is in my JUNIOR CLASS hahah. Oh yeah, tt day, my family went out for dinner. Dad asked sis why she wasn't wearing her school badge. I was like saying orhhh why you never wear. My hand automatically went up to my collar and lo and behold... i didn't have mine too when i quite clearly remembered wearing it. We both panicked and thought we both so suay, lost our badge on same day. First time i lost and my sis also lost. Must be her influence. We went back home and i found my badge on my table. I couldn't stop laughing, especially when grace ALSO found her badge at home. We both forgot to wear it on the same day. Retarded. LOL.

So many things to say, but i can't remember any of them... prayer...

Dance then wherever You may be... G U I Dance

2008-02-09T04:31:00.000-08:00

Hui Min sent me this email and I thought it was really cool. In one of my earlier posts, I referred to the song I Hope You Dance by Ronan Keating. It SO is related to this :)

Dancing With God
When I meditated on the word Guidance,
I kept seeing 'dance' at the end of the word.
I remember reading that doing God's will is a lot like dancing.
When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.
The movement doesn't flow with the music,
and everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.
When one person realizes that, and lets the other lead,
both bodies begin to flow with the music.
One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back
or by pressing Lightly in one direction or another.
It's as if two become one body, moving beautifully.
The dance takes surrender, willingness,
and attentiveness from one person
and gentle guidance and skill from the other.
My eyes drew back to the word Guidance.
When I saw 'G: I thought of God, followed by 'u' and 'i'.
'God, 'u' and 'i' dance.'
God, you, and I dance.
As I lowered my head, I became willing to trust
that I would get guidance about my life.
Once again, I became willing to let God lead.
My prayer for you today is that God's blessings
and mercies be upon you on this day and everyday.
May you abide in God as God
abides in you.
Dance together with God, trusting God to lead
and to guide you through each season of your life.
There is no cost but a lot of rewards;
so let's continue to pray for one another.
And I Hope You Dance

So cool right?

Anyway, that was just something extra.

For no apparent reason, especially at a time when I really ought to be finishing my homework... I suddenly thought of something Simeon said during one of our Cornerstone meetings. Not just any meeting, but it was a meeting last year! I know it's crazy, so random, but it just popped into my head and I decided to blog about it before I forget it. (not really sure but I MAY have blogged about it before, think I'm getting old)

HIGHWAY! First thing that the word Highway reminds me of is the song Life Is A Highway by Rascal Flatts. Those who watched Cars should be quite familiar with that song. Here's what I gathered from Simeon's umm... teaching/reflection/sharing thingy.

Life IS like a highway. It's a journey all of us have to take. We all have the same destination in mind at the end of the road. The road might be long for some, short for others. It WILL be bumpy at times, more bumpy at certain times. Along the way, there are many exits. Exits that make us stray from the Highway, exits that lead to Petrol Stations for us to renew, refuel and recharge, and of course exits that lead back to where we came from. Before each exit, there are always SIGNs that tell us where we are and helps lead us to where we want to go.

Where do we go to renew, recharge and refuel? What turns us away from our destination?

Sometimes, we speed through life (ain't that fun :) ), never stopping, never looking back. We move so darn fast we never get the chance to look at the signs properly before we zoom past them. We never look back, never stopping to check whether we have already gone past our intended destination. We never slow down to figure out where we made a wrong turn and where we have to make corrections to our route. We speed along life thinking, we only live life once, so let's enjoy it. We speed so fast sometimes that people around us gets affected.

Are we like that? Doing what we want, not knowing whether we have made a positive difference in the lives of the people around us. Will we eventually stray off our original path, getting sidetracked by all the exits around us that lead to dead ends?

Sometimes we are so cautious and umm... rigid (for lack of better word) that we keep checking where we are, always looking back, never really moving forward. We become STAGNANT. We plan and plan, afraid to do things for fear of getting hurt. Hurt from rejection, embarrassment, physical injury, betrayal... We are afraid of stepping out of a comfort zone we created, never expanding it. We like where we are and we don't want things to change even if there is a chance that we could be much happier. We never improve.

We tell ourselves there is that chance, but it is only a chance. What if I... What if others... What if they... We never see the most important what if, What If God wanted me to take that first step?

The road laws are much like the Church's teachings and the signs are very much like the... well... the signs. Subtle signs that God gives us to lead us on the path to Him, signs that we might miss if we never slow down, signs that we might not dare follow if we never take the risk to do so.

He is our G-U-I-Dance. If only we would let Him take the lead, step up to that challenge guys!

PS: so easy to say but so hard to follow... sorry for the abrupt ending but I really have to do my HW now.

blah blah...

2008-02-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

blah blah...
Hearts on Fire yesterday, small stoners turn up BUT it was cool, real cool.
blah blah...
Missed last 2 lessons of school to go for interview which was ok I guess.
blah blah...
Blogging now duh.
blah blah...
'blah'-ing so many times and I also dunno why.
blah blah...
I better start studying though I dun feel like it.
blah blah...
I need more will power.
blah blah...
After this I'll be stoning.
blah blah...
Maybe think of Lenten Vigil stuff.
blah blah...

Now... Lent. I just noticed a sheet of paper my mum printed for me a long time ago. Here's how it goes...

"What are you doing for Lent? Lent should be more than a time of fasting. It should be a joyous season of feasting. Lent is a time to fast from certain things and to feast on others. It is a season in which we should:

- Fast from judging others... Feast on the Christ indwelling there;
- Fast from emphasis on differences... Feast on unity of Life;
- Fast from words that pollute... Feast on phrases that purify;
- Fast from discontent... Feast on gratitude;
- Fast from anger... Feast on patience;
- Fast from pessimism... Feast on optimism;
- Fast from worry... Feast on divine order;
- Fast from complaining... Feast on appreciation;
- Fast from negatives... Feast on affirmatives;
- Fast from unrelenting pressures... Feast on unceasing prayer;
- Fast from bitterness... Feast on forgiveness;
- Fast from self concern... Feast on compassion for others;
- Fast from discouragements... Feast on hope;
- Fast from lethargy... Feast on enthusiasm;
- Fast from idle gossip... Feast on purposeful silence;
- Fast from facts that depress... Feast on verities that uplift;
- Fast from thoughts that weaken... Feast on promises that inspire.

The goal of Lent is to be prepared for Easter. In preparing for the death and resurrection of Jesus, we do the same for our own lives. Lent is a yearly retreat to remember who we are and to whom we are indebted for who we are and all we have. My prayer is that whatever practices you choose for Lent will not be meaningless but will only help you in your quest for holiness."

I actually typed it out lol.
blah blah...

Couldn't Help It :) (umm, really random thoughts)

2008-01-26T07:33:00.000-08:00

Seriously, i couldn't.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 20

Saw this on Hansel's blog. I remembered lit class in sec 4.
I love this poem. A lot. I live by it. I'm so the type of person who will do things precisely because most others don't want to. I love the idea of being unique, but also the idea that we are all the same in our unique-ness. I like the little differences each of us has, although sometimes I am really irritated by those who can't, yes, even if it is that that makes them different from me which is not really different actually considering I get irritated that they are different from me which they are actually not etc. See where I'm going?

No? Good, cuz me neither. You must be nuts if you understood that.

As I said, I love doing what others don't. Although, there is a sacrifice involved in that too. I won't say what but trust me on that. Sometimes, going down the other path seems so much easier. To do that however means I have to turn back along the path I chose. Mind you I chose the path I chose, but that does not mean I know where I am going. I'm still wandering around, just that I felt the urge to go down the path with the least footprints. What awaits me at the end of the road? I hope it's finding why I'm here now I guess, I don't know what of course.

Will I be a better person?

I was supposed to end off now... until another thought came into my head.

I like to think of myself as a reflective person. Of course that isn't always good. Especially if you can NEVER stop thinking about certain things you want to forget. Or if something goes wrong, I'll mull over it till kingdom come or till somebody hits me in the head (and I probably wouldn't even notice someone hit me).

Now for the people who know... (umm, I think that only includes Mat and Bert) I'm so over it, but I certainly can't help thinking what might have been. That sucks, even though I knew it had to be that way.

Orientation certainly was a turning point. At least for me.

Oh yeah, IG outing tmr!!! Hui Min pang seh... although it's not her choice.

Legion outing was fun. We practically swarmed magic wok at Novena today. Should be around 30+ ppl who went and I'm proud to say many CJCians :) Of course I was even prouder that all there were Josephian Legionaries who felt that even after graduation, the times we shared together meant something. Happy birthday to the new ancients Melvin and Hansel, ancient Joshua, more ancient-er Eugene, and ancient-est Edmond.

Heard Jason's doing Science Research thing (H3), congrats dude.

Oh yeah. Another thing. I'm so really excited and nervous. I got shortlisted for the SPF Book Prize thing and I now have to go for some interview. I've been keeping all these emotions in ever since I got the sms (as much that is possible that is), the main reason being I didn't know how to share it with others without sounding like I'm 'suaning' others or trying to make others feel jealous. Which I really hope not to do. I hope to get it, but I hate interviews. I really SUCK at them. Why? Perhaps because I end up talking a whole lot of nonsense without answering the question especially if I am asked "Why do you think you should________________?" It's so darn ego to answer that question and I really dislike having to 'sell' oneself to others. Ideally, they should just see for themselves whether I deserve it or not but of course that's not in the closest feasible.

That's not to say I'm not honoured to have even reached to this point and looking back at how I used to be like in Primary and Secondary School (sec 1 and 2 that is), I do believe I've come a long way. It might not seem like it, but I do have a thirst for knowledge. What type of knowledge? That's a different matter.

Congrats sis for Os. You might not have done as well as you hoped to for it I guess but I'm still really proud of you. You did beat me in terms of breakdown of scores if that's any consolation. :) LOL. There's always As to thrash me hehe.

I have something else on my mind but it's totally private this one. No one ask me please. I just had to say but I can't go into more details. It's not my place to say anything.

I bought Paramore's ALBUM!!! Yeah!! Riot! ! Oh yeah. It's good.

SJI campfire was wow. Definitely less people from my batch came to see, but still quite a number. The secondary 1s looked SO small, but they really enjoyed themselves. I still remember being a PSF in secondary 4 very vividly. I miss that feeling.

Still thinking of something for Lenten Vigil. I need to come up with a proposal with Nad and Frips. I'm a 1st water then 2nd fire person. The fire part of me... when will it ignite? I sometimes get those sudden inspirations, sudden creative sparks (at least I like to think so). Like those when I am struck by various things (not literally struck). This is NOT one of those moments. Where's Mr Pang when you need him? LOL.

Lately the only thing that struck me was this...

"God chose to create us without OUR help, He however chose to save us with OUR help."

Let that be something for you (whoever's reading this, duh) to ponder on too for this upcoming season of lent. And with that, I end my post.

I couldn't help it :)

PARAMORE AND DUBLINSTUD! !!!

2008-01-24T06:47:00.000-08:00

OMG!!!! I'm so into these 2 bands now la!!! AHHHHHH... darn... i want paramore's album... they're damn good la...

THis a cover for paramore's acoustic Misery Business by DublinStud!

Paramore's acoustic Misery Business

Here's CrushCrushCrush by Paramore

Emergency by Paramore

Love her voice, love their style, love the music. :) Hope you guys enjoy the songs.

Overdue again. Orientation stuff

2008-01-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

1-2 weeks has passed since Orientation 1 2008 Fervour. It was good, love IG04 and 1T04. Enjoyed facilitating with Hui Min, being part of Ole. Don't know y ppl like being game masters though. It's SO NOT FUN. I'd rather be with my IG and my class.
Btw, i jus posted 4 vids on Youtube. One mass dance one which is NOT from finale night (cuz i dance on finale night, so i couldn't have videoed it duh) and one's the house intros. I was from Ole house and since i helped with intro... i couldn't vid Ole house intro (sad right?). The other one's a task IG04 did. Funny though i only caught the last part, couldn't find my phone to take vid earlier.Final one is facil skit on finale night :)

Anyway, i couldn't get a photo with 1t04 (you guys disappeared too fast after finale) but i did get 2 with IG04.

Here are some photos...

Hope everyone enjoyed it, especially J1s.

Oh yeah, damn cool. I see so many legion ppl in CJC!! YEAH!! TT's the spirit guys.

Now back in school again. Volunteered for O2 2008 assistant ic for log. (didn't want oic cuz CA will hav loads of stuff to do) OCIP ppl have to do something for rockafella. Rockafella AUDITION JUDGE YEAH!!! Actually, Liselle, Anthea, Arthur, Daryl and i wanted to try for rockafella and we chose 2 songs - Clouds by Marty Casey and Here Is Gone by Goo Goo Dolls. (we couldn't hav played Bohemian Rhapsody OR Slither of course) We were quite noobs. Tt meant however, we couldn't be judges. In the end, we figured judging would be more fun than trying out for rockafella and NOT getting in. Good luck all bands trying out!

HW, tests coming up... usual stuff although the new timetable WITHOUT CHINESE rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cornerstone running through our aims and purpose again. I pray we are able to find it with His guidance. Oh yeah, had tt youth forum thing last week.

for all you ppl...

2007-12-29T06:53:00.000-08:00

for those who wanna give up or are depressed...

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed

Chorus: I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
I hope you dance, I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livinâ€™ might mean takinâ€™ chances, but they're worth takinâ€™
Lovinâ€™ might be a mistake but it's worth makinâ€™
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out, reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,
I hope you dance (time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance (rolling us along)
I hope you dance (tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance (where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,

dance (hold for 2 4 counts), I hope you dance,
I hope you dance (time is wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance (rolling us along)
I hope you dance (tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance (where those years have gone)
(tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
(where those years have gone) I Hope You Dance - Ronan Keating

..................................................................................

now for those who are about to blow up cuz of tension and loads of pressure...

Took a ride to the end of the lane
Where no one ever goes.
Ended up on a broken train with nobody I know.
But the pain and the longing's the same.
When you're dying
Now I’m lost and I’m screaming for help alone.

Relax, take it easy
For there is nothing that we can't do.
Relax, take it easy
Blame it on me or blame it on you.

It’s as if I’m scared.
It’s as if I’m terrified.
It’s as if I'm scared.
It’s as if I’m playing with fire.
Scared.
It’s as if I’m terrified.
Are you scared?
Are we playing with fire?

Relax
(Love) There is an answer to the darkest times.
It’s clear we don’t understand it, but the last thing on my mind
Is to leave you.
I believe that we’re in this together.
Don’t scream – there are so many roads left.

Relax, take it easy
For there is nothing that we can't do.
Relax, take it easy
Blame it on me or blame it on you.

Relax, take it easy
For there is nothing that we can't do.
Relax, take it easy
Blame it on me or blame it on you.
[Relax, Take It Easy lyrics on http://www.metrolyrics.com]

Relax, take it easy
For there is nothing that we can't do.
Relax, take it easy
Blame it on me or blame it on you.

Relax, take it easy
For there is nothing that we can't do.
Relax, take it easy
Blame it on me or blame it on you.

It’s as if I’m scared.
It’s as if I’m terrified.
It’s as if I'm scared.
It’s as if I’m playing with fire.
(Relax)
Scared.
It’s as if I’m terrified.
Are you scared?
Are we playing with fire?

Relax
Relax

[spoken:]

Same day I want to dress for wedding
Same day while i won't married
What happened, He's go meeted another girl
While he was married another girl, I was very very sad
I can talk like God take my legs
How he's made a different lady, I no believe.

After one month i am send out to balcony
Some bomb, come for my eyes. My eyes gone.
My eyes gone in bomb, now i have only one eyes.
I am sad, until now I no married any man after.

Relax, Take It Easy - Mika

.....................................................................................

hahaha i dun even know if the lyrics make sense... but hey, they're dedicated to you guys. umm... even though u can't hear them?!?!

hahahaahahahaha

it's Christmas and everyone's depressed...

emotions running high... i feel like laughing... and i dun know y

2007-12-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

ooh... my title rhymes... anyway it is exactly how i feel as we draw closer to orientation 1 2008. here's my take on this...

first of all... involvement usually determines whether watever thing is happening is a high point or low point in our journey. but even the low points are high points when we turn our graphs of high and low points upside down as Mr Tan Jek Suan and Mr Leong so rightly pointed out. they are high points cuz it shows us that they are good opportunities to learn and to develop ourselves. right now... O1 2008 is at a low point for me. y? cuz my level of involvement is rather low right now. hopefully, i'll be more involved in O2 and during O1 itself. but tt's beside the point.

one thing tt struck me so far... was how much i really admire those who have so much to do but never complain. they dun keep it in either which is definitely unhealthy but rather, they are able to fully accept whatever they have to do... do it well and keep calm throughout. and that i know... is an extremely hard thing to do for most people... so kudos to ppl like matthias :)

if there was something i learnt from JC1 religion retreat, it wouldn't be tt there will be conflicts. i learnt tt a long time ago. it is tt we should ask for help when we need it and not only tt, but we should have faith in the ppl we work with and not to try to do everything no matter how much we want to. for the CAwingers, remember when i TRIED to organise the retreat events, Mr Pang and Mrs Leong had to remind me that i could and actually should split the CA to do seperate sections. i tried to be involved in all of the areas which made how we were doing things much less efficient. i wanted to do everything cuz i love stuff like planning for retreats (which is y i was also quite disappointed when i wasn't in O1 com). after that realisation hit me, we slit up to do the diff sections like morning praise, ice breakers and night reflection.

i forced myself to trust the ppl doing the other sections, checking up only once in a while and making sure everything was being coordinated properly. i didn't really have to. Clare did a wonderful job for icebreakers for example. i didn't need to worry. knowing when to step back, accepting tt some things are out of our control, trusting the ppl we work with and of course doing the best we can for the things tt are within our control. Most importantly, especially as a CAwinger, i gotta believe tt God has planned for all of this to happen for a reason. whether i can comprehend it or not.

another thing i learned in SJI in an RME lesson... yes... believe it or not... i learned something... Friar Mike asked us wat were our addictions. Ppl gave commonplace answers that were no brainers but Robindro (if i remember correctly) replied... SELF PITY. Addiction to self pity... boy tt was new. i never thought of addictions like THAT. for those who knew me last time... i used to complain a lot... wah so many things to do or watever shit. so poor thing... have to blah blah blah... i thought about it... and i hated tt part of myself. i jus wanted the attention or to use all the things tt i needed to do make myself seem more useful, to hide insecurities etc. tt was SUPERficial. i made a resolution not to dwell in self pity tt night and i've been trying ever since. i've fallen a few times since then although noticeably less that usual and for tt i'm proud of myself.

i still have much more to learn from the ppl involved in O1, committee or not, facil or not, teachers or students, participants or 'in charge's. i'm gonna make O1 a high point... i promise myself and God with us tt this Christmas.

Pray for me? All of you are in my prayers too :) especially those who are feeling the pressures the orientation brings to many.

PS: i still feel like laughing... i bet God is too as He watches all of us struggling so hard when all we have to do is turn to Him for help. :)

overdue-r?!?

2007-12-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

k tis more overdue...
part (b) of wat i did during holidays...
would love to put photos but sian... so here's ten...
Sydney Opera House

Love the Light

woah... looks good right?

sis & myself

small entrance to real bedroom... serious. damn cool house

officially my fav bird (sorry bert, it's not u although i see similarities hehe, oh it's called frog mouth or sumthing like that)

double rainbow

okay...

sand dunes

love the lighting again

that was australia
oh yeah... they shopped a lot... and so i finished 5 books by the way...
the new mitch albom book (forgot the name oops), Under the eagle (rome about to conquer britain and stuff, historical fiction, bloody, bloody vulgar and funny, and vivid, interesting lol), a star wars book bout the rise of a dark lord Darth Bane (damn cool!! gave up looking for it in singapore 2 years ago), 2 more star wars books on the Old Republic (one on Anakin, the other Obi Wan).
Highlights?
Sandboarding and the jet boat hahaha YEAH!!
oh, btw i got a few of those random semi precious stones
it was damn cool. one said relieves eczema! i was shocked lol. it's fate man

PS: GRACE!! SORRY FOR CALLING YOU WHAT I CALLED YOU IN AUSTRALIA!! I WAS JUST Really PISSED AT THAT TIME!! SORRY, :( really. IT SUCKED SERIOUSLY, we hadn't fought in ages and i spoilt a perfectly nice stay at such a nice house... X(

now part (c) church retreat
it was the best ppl! i couldn't go for YISS cuz of australia but heck, this was fun and meaningful. and boy do the games make the cjc dirty orientation games look clean. hehe.
anyway, i dun have the photos so too bad... anyway, i loved the Reconciliation part, the Confession and the outpouring (not downpouring lol, it was downpouring outside then though hahaha) session. Cool... so tt's how resting in the spirit is like. Plus hearing all the testimonials ,made it even more beautiful... sharing was damn funny... some mental and physical spasms... seriously... no seriously *hand jerking up* lol. Sorry, i must sound like i've gone nuts... only those there would know wat i was talking bout.

sacrament: an outward sign of inward graces (i dun ever remember learning tt in cat class and now it seems so beautiful, meaningful...)

oh yeah, jus had follow up session on sun, cool.

"When He calls you... It is for you to DIE"

whole lot of meaning in that and it really struck me... think bout it whoever's reading my blog, i won't treat you like an idiot.

part (d) (almost the end)
Council retreat... fun, interesting, bonding time with councilors i guess... i only have a few photos. Games were dirty but not as disgusting as the one at church retreat.

sorry Kai Chuen, Guan Wen and Clare especially hehe...

BBQ

sji got flying turban... here we have flying team cjc shirt (sorry menveer!! joking only)

footprints

winning group photo, courtesy of marie and her cam

\we had a BBQ btw if you hadn't noticed

Overdue

2007-12-20T05:09:00.000-08:00

Wat i did this holiday
a)OCIP India: Tamil Nadu (14th-22nd Nov)
b)Sydney Trip (29th Nov - 8th Dec)
c)SFX Youth Retreat (14th-16th Dec)
d)Council Retreat (18th-20th Dec)
Haven't touched HW yet
Some mass dance practises
Lots of thinking
Nothing
Dirge of Cerberus (omg...)
Heroes of Might & Magic V (omg... i dun believe this...)
Knights of the Old Republic (OMG... I DUN BELIEVE THIS...)
again... not yet start studies

PART (a)
Too many photos to post all but... here's a few...

It was great and i kinda miss India now (curious rite? considering so many ppl getting sick). craps... i want to type bout the experience but so much to say... so... the only thing i can say is go India YOURSELF. I learnt a lot and was reminded a lot of SJI by the La Salle Brothers there, to be men of service. And loads of other stuff too.

wah... it's late already and still only finished part (a). To be cont'd... another time... IT"S NOT LAZINESS! IT'S PROCRASTINATION... lol

OCIP INDIA, Tamil Nadu, Tuticorin

2007-11-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

Well, this will be my last post before i leave for india tmr. Not tt i've been posting alot though. Anyway, the sentosa pics... too sian to post the rest. Come to me with thumbdrive or sumthing if you want the rest, including the vids. I posted one of them on Youtube.

Just been thinking though, in the car when i came from dinner (something i haven't been doing for a reallllllyy long time), about stuff. Just stuff. 2 main things actually.

1. Qinrui... how leh? how bout the 10% chance of u not moving away. Serious lor, we'll miss ya loads if you do XP. I remembered life in SJI, loads of sentimental stuff too.

2. OCIP... of course. OCIP... why did i really choose to sign up? What am i expecting from the trip? To be painfully honest, i didn't sign up for the kids there in India or for the sake of helping them or for reaching out to those in need. I realised why i felt tt way, ain't it so hypocritical to go all the way to another country to help others when we don't even do tt in our own country. Why then did i sign up? A big reason would be... to have fun, yes, fun. The experience, of going to India perhaps, an experience i doubt would ever pass me by again, or at least for a very long time. I want to learn stuff, to see another person's reality maybe. I'm not sure if i'm making sense right now but let me try to explain things as i see it. We're supposed to go there and teach, which is a rather large portion of the trip. Will they actually learn anything? Wouldn't it be better if a real teacher, trained, decided to sacrifice what they had and decide to stay there to teach? I have a strange feeling that the people there took lots of pain in preparing for our arrival, time and effort they could have put elsewhere. People only go for such trips really... to learn, not to give but to receive. That's not to say we dun give back. In fact i think we all know this and we therefore strive to give as much as we can, BECAUSE we know we will leave having taken away much more. I must be sounding really cynical really but that's not really the kind of attitude i have towards the trip, in fact, i'm feeling really excited. I just can't wait. I hope all goes well.

There was so much more i wanted to type but curiously... they all slipped from my mind... wasted...

PS: Better mentally prep myself for diarrhea, headaches, fever and vomiting. :P Joking.

BYE GUYS! Till the 22nd.

SENTOSA

2007-11-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

loads of photos and vids which i wanted to post on class blog but i forgot the user and password XP IT WAS A GREAT CLASS OUTING!!!!! need i say more? the pics...

Random stuff. :)

Call it wat u will :)

2007-10-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

I just found this cool mashup on Youtube.

Music and video made by Norwegian Recycling

The mashup contains samples from:
1. Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
2. Howie Day - Collide
3. Five For Fighting - Superman
4. Angela Ammons - Always Getting Over You
5. Boyzone - All That I Need
6. 3 Doors Down - Here Without You

Anyway, interesting last few days. Just started dotaing (like maybe 1-2 games a day), Mr Yeow got married (congrats)(council told him he had 9 months starting from tt night), we went PS TCC to talk cock and drink coffee (dun try choco tango, it's neither here nor there), PW dry runs (3 already and we're practising more from tuesday to thursday), got a new phone (i seriously thought my mum was getting it for herself, in the end i traded my k810i for her new k850i!! ty mum n dad!), supposed to be studying 4 chinese tmr and i've been trying (seriously), found that song u see up there, jus damn sian and can't wait till tmr's over (Bert, dota after). Hmm wat else, nothing much. AND YAY i can do 5 pullups liao from zero at directly after promos! Now i only worried bout my other NAPFA stations which i have not tried this entire year since pull up cmi. (wait... cmi could mean can make it... should be ctmi)
enough bullshit... hope u guys enjoyed the song.

PS: I'm straying... and i no longer hav the motivation to want to draw back to Him. Hope and pray i find a place for Him in my life again.

2007-10-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me an email a few days ago. It was about a Youtube video that touched him greatly. I'm glad he shared it with others. I was truly amazed, amazed at how a mere skit was able to impact me so greatly. How? I won't say. Just know that I suddenly had a deep longing to be back in the loving arms of God. I couldn't help but hate myself for letting the pressures of the world take me and draw me away from where I should be...

I'll let the video speak for itself.

Dearest Father,
bring me back into Your wonderful Presence once again, the place where I should be. Help me find my way back to You...

Superheroes!!

2007-09-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone watched the new 'reality' series Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Its a stupid show.

People dress in really 'interesting' costumes of their own imaginary superheroes, competing to... "out-hero" (?!?!) each other. The winner will be immortalised in a comic book (series?) by the world famous... umm... that guy who draws superheroes (oops... can't remember his name).

Anyway, it was really either tv or studies and of course I chose the former (yes, I AM feeling guilty). Contestants were told, rather dramatically, that they would be tested not on just superficial hero stuff but to test their qualities as super-HUMANS. One who helps those in need, who are there and care for the poor, the lost and the least. One who is willing to take the time and effort to make the world a better place, not in a SAVE-THE-WORLD style thingy but through little things.

I was admittedly rather skeptical I guess. I was questioned... how the **** were they going to test people's innate qualities and morality and even if they could, make sure that they were doing what they were doing not just for show.

Here's what they did. A 'test' on speed. They were to change into their costumes inconspicuously in a public area (like superman going into the telephone booth to change that sort of thing) as fast as they could and reach the destination as fast as they could. Now the interesting part... a young girl crying for help (as she was supposedly lost) was placed along the path the 'heroes' needed to take to reach their destination. She was practically opposite a security station thingy.

She was crying "help me... ... I can't find my mommy... I'm lost" out loud at passerbys.

I thought... wth... so obvious... they're obviously not testing the contestants on speed... I assumed everyone would stop to help the girl. She was practically telling them HEY I"M YOUR MISSION!

I was obviously wrong. There were 10 contestants. 4 stopped. 3 gals and 1 guy stopped to help. No one actually knew that was the main test DESPITE the guy telling them they were going to be tested on their qualities as human beings the night before. Sad ain't it? 6 of them ran past the crying little girls, paying no heed to her at all, serious case of 'dao'ing. The girl even stared straight into the face of one of the contestants. Even worse, you could tell that the contestants (the 6) were soooooo caught up in trying to act cool as superheroes... they completely shut themselves out from their surroundings. An explosion could have taken place along the path without them even noticing it. (k... maybe that was slightly exaggerated but still...)

I actually thought stopping to help would be pure instinctive. Maybe to an extent it was - note how 3 gals stopped to help compared to one guy who also so happens to be the only father there I believe.

Do 'superheroes' not exist to help others, especially the lowly and weak ones?
Is completing the mission more important than the people they were sworned to protect (at least in the comics they are)?

If we think about it, there's a superhero inside all of us. Everytime we do a good deed, no matter how tiny, we're changing the world, making it a better place.

Perhaps that is the message this show is trying to convey to us, at least indirectly. I don't believe I'm saying this but... It might not be such a stupid show after all.

and finally... here's some random videos :)

Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Budak Pantai

Creep by Marty Casey on the show Rockstar INXS (I LOVE THIS VERSION OF CREEP)

Clouds by Marty Casey & The Lovehammers (Love this album too, all the songs are great)

Long Walks Are Nice

2007-08-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

It was NATIONAL DAY YESTERDAY!! YAY (seriously... cuz of the holiday) Haha, Qinrui invited Mat and I to go watch the fireworks at Harbourfront (yes... on his yacht... which was seriously cool). Interesting day all in all. Met some of Qinrui's OG mates lol. Mat will know what I mean when I say that they're an... 'interesting' but surprisingly pleasant bunch. Anyway, we couldn't see the actual parade but we had a great view of the fireworks :) Oh yeah, made some funny concoction that we drank - peach syrup plus sprite plus low fat milk lol. Thanks Qinrui and friends for a great night! Too bad Mat and I had to leave after the thing, I wouldn't have mind playing one or two games of pool.

Now... the best part of these 2 days so far... I went 'jellyfishing' today in the words of Liselle the Great aka Cowpat (dun ask me why). Studied as much as I possibly could at her house with Mat, Boon Peng and Hamster (their old classmate). I was feeling kind of sick but who cares? Took some stupid photos (they know what I'm referring to), and had Signature dish Cheese Brownie for dinner. Not joking here. By the way, it was REALLY good... hmmm...

Ah... here's the actual best part. I followed Mat to Catholic Spiritual Centre (opp Nativity Church) for AMPLIFY. It's a youth ministry I think. Our first times under the invitation of Andrew Tay, Mat's fellow catechist and 1st 3 months classmate.

We arrived late though. Everyone was really singing their hearts out there. I personally did not know the songs they were singing but I liked the atmosphere created. Everyone really praised God (not to mention, those leading were experienced and they were great). They had this 'talk' of sorts by a guy on the topic on The Tongue: The Steering Wheel of Our Life. I think his name is Dominic. He was an old CJCian, Josephian and Michaelian. Plus, he was in CJC Catholic Activities wing in Student Council. I guess the parallels he had with both Mat and myself made us more receptive to what he was trying to say I guess. It might seem like a boring topic but I can vouch that it really isn't. It is completely related to our life, especially so for those of us in school. I won't go into much details but... I thought of a few things during the talk:

1. He tells us that we shouldn't gossip, slander others... and even gives lots of relevant quotes from the bible (omg seriously pro), but hadn't really touched on how we can do it. Seriously, it isn't an easy task to do what is right. Then it occured to me... Love your neighbour as you would yourself. That made a lot of sense. If I truly love my neighbour and I am able to empathise or truly understand what the people around me are going through plus I try to be sensitive to others, I will therefore automatically be more careful of the things I say. So the basis on how not to hurt others is to truly love them and God our Father. Bearing in mind that our neighbours include the people we might dislike, the people who are outcasts, the people who might not be our friends and who might even be our 'enemy'.

2. I really admire those in Amplify. They carry out this session thing (Full P&W and input) one every week. All of them are working adults with families too. Yet they are able to find the time to bring God to others. Those in Cornerstone at least will know what I mean. It is already so hard to plan a very short worship session. Plus... our sessions are rather short too. Yet, we are already constantly saying that we have no time to plan and so on. We have the time to go out and have fun but no time for God. No time to seriously plan for a session. It seems that I am questioning how sincere I am so very often this year. We are barely able to bring God into our very own lives. The people involved in amplify are bringing God into the lives of everyone around them. We should aim to be like them, in a sense that they are doing what God asks all of us to do. To be light for the world and salt of the earth. They are proclaiming his precious Word. Something that most of us neglect to even try doing.

3. And then I thought... How many people who have attended this session would actually do the same. As in to spread God's Word. Not only by word of mouth but by their very actions. Who will actually live life the way God wants us to? The path to rightgeousness is not an easy one but we have God by our side always. It just seems like we're alone because we never try to slow down to see the signs God leaves for us. The message that God has shared with us via the people in Amplify ministry should be shared with everyone around us. We have attended the session for our spiritual growth. We learn and it is our duty to spread this Good News to those who would otherwise not hear it. Shouldn't we not care for our Brothers and Sisters in Christ? Our neighbours?

4. After the session, I proceeded to go home. I wasn't sure what bus to take, thank God Matthias was quite familiar with the place. He told me what bus to take (phew). I knew that I was supposed to take bus 136 to Cardiff but as the bus stopped at Serangoon Garden Circus Interchange, I had this weird urge to get off the bus. And I did. It was a beautiful night and only then did I truly appreciate the nice breeze that was blowing. I stopped to take in some fresh air and I proceeded the relatively long walk home. I really enjoyed that time I had alone. Well... to be truthful, I wasn't alone. I felf God's presence. Not really sensed, but knew. The knowledge that God was and will always be with me comforted me greatly and uplifted my innermost being, my spirit. I never felt so alive as I walked back home with the cool soft breeze blowing, seemingly guiding and directing me along. I was listening to Praise and Worship songs on my iPod. I praised God for everything that he is to me. i praised God for all the things he has blessed me with. I praised God for everything he had done for me. How could I ever repay him for all the things he'd done? I thanked God for my family who has always been there for me everytime and everysept of the way. I thanked God for friends like Mat and Qinrui who have always been there to guide me and to comfort me. Perhaps God works through the people around me to help me as I travel journey through life, then I sincerely do hope that he too will use me to serve those around me. That I may be a person of Christ, to be light for others. And then... I reached home... more awake, more alert and more alive than ever before. A bit hungry... but satisfied.

Now here I am, typing what I've just typed in the hope that at least one part of what i've typed will have struck anyone who does read this post.

Serious... Long Walks are Nice.

God Bless.
James Joshua

PAC & LRC Opening!

2007-07-28T01:52:00.000-07:00

Haha, yay. It was a fun day. Took lots of prep but we did it! Bro Paul liked it too, said it was well organised. Kudos to all who played a part in that 'momentous occasion' as Salim would call it.

Can't really be bothered to type alot today though. I just wanted to put up a vid on one of the performances later that evening. Yep, it is CJC's very own Dance! They put up an extremely good performance (although i couldn't see most of it) which should have gotten them gold WITH HONOURS at SYF. Heck... anyway, it's called Firefly. I love the music too, nice fusion thing going on. Forgive whoever took the vid though, a bit shaky and doesn't really do the performance much justice. who has a nice vid of the performance send me leh!!!

and here's a nice song by Eric Clapton called Tears in Heaven

getting so damn frustrated... be warned... ranting

2007-07-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

fine... i did better than lot's of people for midyears. heck, i'm still disappointed with myself not because i didn't do as well as my classmates blah blah but more because i failed to live up to my own expectations. perhaps i should start studying mor... studying. today was ptm and i found out i had a D for current affairs, better than i expected but still...

now the only thing i look forward to each week is council meeting. the teachers so remind me of a teacher i knew and sji. anyway, i like the meetings cuz it seems like that is the only time in which i acutally learn and grow, at least in my faith. starting from this year i guess, i lost interest in my studies and was more drawn to my faith. (a good thing or not? i'm not really sure). I love God, or at least i think i do. Michelle once asked us stoners, how do we know that we are truly loving God for the right reasons? i answered her question by saying we have to look for various indicators. eg... we love our friends and family right? we love telling them stuff that happens to us each day right? isn't that one indicator that we love them? we WANT to share our life with them. The same for God, do WE WANT to share our life with him? Or do we only go to him in times of need. So i asked myself, do i really love God?

then, i thought about something - thirst for God and knowledge (about him). THIS is one of the reasons why i'm getting frustrated. Everyone is at different points in their life where their faith matters to them in different ways. Everyone is also at different levels of faith. Some might be at a point where they jus want to experience God more fully or perhaps to become more active in church or to grow socially. i'm at a point where i WANT to know more about him, about the church, about her teachings, about the impact the church has made and can make, about how WE are affected etc. i miss religious and moral education under friar mike and brother mike, legion meetings under guidance of mr dominic ang... i learnt a lot there under their guidance. now... i'm not really learning...

people are more interested in praise and worship or jus having fun during sessions. people who dun mind learning jus wait for others to plan session, soaking everything like a sponge, (taking almost everything at face value btw), and never contribute. sounds a bit harsh but... here's what i see. i've shared and taught u guys all that i've learned from my experiences and my teachers over the last 2 years: a bit on the church's history, how to plan session, reflections, what the church teaches us and a lot more.

what i've learnt from you guys, i had to squeeze them out. the only reason i do stay is cuz u guys are my friends and we are a community. i want u all to grow and i get lots of satisfaction knowing that u've taken something away from the sessions i plan but i'm running dry. now, people dun come for sessions for reallllyyyy irritating reasons... can't wake up cuz too tired, watched soccer till 3 am, have to go for mass cuz woke up too late, want to go out with someone and so on. do we really love God? i planned for session once and jus because we had only 8 other people who came that day, i hear "y dun we save the session for another time and let's go out." do YOU GUYS KNOW HOW HURT I WAS?!?!?!?!?!?! People ****ing took the time to plan for session and u guys can't even be bothered to GO for session? (seriously, i'm not saying everyone's like that, i really admire the people who do come for sessions regularly and i can truly see that they try to grow in their faith) but seriously, we get volunteers to do session, then 1 or 2 days before the next session, they complain that they didn't have the time to do session. fine, i dun mind doing the session, u have exams or lots of CCA committments. once... twice... thrice.!..!..! FOUR times.... fine.... fIvE!! ... DO I REALLY LOOK SO FREE?! jus cause i dun mind doing sessions a few times doesn't mean i can do it EVERYTIME! Do i NOT have CCA committments? do i NOT have exams? do i NOT have to deal with my HW or STUDIES? whatever happened to the community part?

some say the sessions i do are good (thank you for saying tt), but it's good... for YOU GUYS... i dun learn much from the session i did u know (unless there are sharings or discussions).

i liked michelle's session on that book thing btw. about trying to be relevant etc. i learnt something that day and i left rather glad.

now... i have to PLAN for SESSION AGAIN.... cuz someone DOESN"T know what to do AND DOESN"T HAVE the TIME. HAS THE SESSION I JUST DONE LAST WEEK ABOUT HOW TO PLAN SESSIONS FAILED SO MISERABLY? HOW CAN WE SAY WE WANT TO LEARN IF WE OURSELVES WILL NOT TRY??!?HOW CAN WE EVER MAKE MISTAKES AND LEARN IF WE NEVER GAVE OURSELVES THE CHANCE TO DO SO? WILL WE ALWAYS GIVE THE SAME EXCUSE OVER AND OVER?

sigh... i Could do with some help guys...

Dear Lord,
i am getting really frustrated lately. grant me peace of mind and the patience to continue loving my friends. help me grow closer to you, that i will continue following Your Will whatever it might be. Amen.

"i will continue O my God, to do all my actions for the love of You"

It's NOT about midyears - Dart Test

2007-07-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

DART TEST

A young lady named Sally , relates an experience she had in a seminary class, given by her teacher, Dr. Smith. She says that Dr. Smith was known for his elaborate object lessons.

One particular day, Sally walked into the seminary and knew they were in for a fun day.

On the wall was a big target and on a nearby table were many darts. Dr.
Smith told the students to draw a picture of someone that they disliked or someone who had made them angry , and he would allow them to throw darts at the person's picture.
Sally's friend drew a picture of who had stolen her boyfriend . Another friend drew a picture of his little brother. Sally drew a picture of a former friend, putting a great deal of detail into her drawing, even drawing pimples on the face. Sally was pleased with the overall effect she had achieved.

The class lined up and began throwing darts. Some of the students threw their darts with such force that their targets were ripping apart. Sally looked forward to her turn, and was filled with disappointment when Dr Smith , because of time limits, asked the students to return to their seats. As Sally sat thinking about how angry she was because she didn't have a chance to throw any darts at her target. Dr. Smith began removing the target from the wall.

Underneath the target was a picture of Jesus . A hush fell over the room as each student viewed the mangled picture of Jesus; holes and jagged marks covered His face and His eyes were pierced.

Dr. Smith said only these words... " In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me ."
Matthew 25:40.

No other words were necessary; the tears filled eyes of the students focused only on the picture of Christ.

When was the last time that we did something to someone we didn't like out of spite?

How often have we, in a fit of anger, wished that some people around us would just die or have something bad happen to them?

Dear Lord, forgive us for we are sinners. There are times when we get too carried away with our emotions that we fail to see that we are hurting You too. Grant us peace of mind and a loving heart so that we might be more discerning in such instances. We ask this in Your Most Holy Name... Amen.

I will continue, O my God, to do all my actions for the love of You.

start of a new life... tribute

2007-06-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

no, not for me. for someone else. my age, someone i don't know personally but was confirmed in our faith the same day as me.a brother in Christ. we went to the same church and i can't even picture him. Thaddaeus... what has he brought into the lives of the people around him? i didn't get a chance and will never get a chance to know.

youth mass today, a joyous event. after the homily, fr ho made an announcement, he was rushing to the hospital. appears that thaddaeus, for some reason collapsed. his heart had suddenly stop beating. just found out that he had a hole in his heart from my sis. it was so sudden, at once the mood dampened. how could one so young, the same age as myself... nevermind. there was a rush of emotions... mostly 'omg' or 'wth'.

throughout the entire mass, i was wondering what his friends and family could be thinking or feeling at that point in time. i also wondered, what legacy did he leave behind? it's human nature, the desire to leave a part of ourselves on the planet so that memories of us will not be forgotten. What will people remember him by? How has his passing on affect the rest of us and for how long? there were a lot more questions that one can reflect on that i thought about but... maybe next time.

they sang 'we will rise again', it was... comforting i guess.

i no longer have the mood to study... i would rather be thinking about... well... other stuff right now. maybe that's thaddaeus gift to the rest of us, even to those who don't really know him, a wake up call. i really really REALLY hope he led a meaningful life. pray for him guys, sometime during all that mugging, pray for him and his family. it's the least we could do.

dear Lord, we thank u for the gift of life that u gave us. thank u for thaddaeus and the impact that he has and had left on us. we pray for his family and friends that they may be comforted, comforted by the fact that he is one more step closer to being next to you now that he has left this world.

Josh

Just Life

2007-06-19T01:05:00.000-07:00

Yay, i finally managed to get a new blogskin, a decent one i guess. My blog seems pretty dead lol. Anyway, i do believe that it's due time i posted something on my blog.

Holidays, break from school, study break or whatever one wants to call it, its still boring... the exception was the 2nd week - Leadership Training Camp! Now that was something. Go UHU! Let's see... in UHU! we have... Jason, Joel, Menveer, Joy, Randy, Daryl, Rina, Cherie, Carmen, Elisabeth, Audrey and myself. Our facils were Christine and Timothy. haha, we stick like glue. There's no question about it, i love my group, a cool bunch of people :) Then there was Elects' Day, i seriously forgot about it until Joy reminded me during the camp. We took a rather long time but we elected our new exco.

President: Menveer
V. Presidents: Joy, Jason and Michael
Admin: Billy
HODs: Arthur, Kai Chuen, Rina, Daryl, Matthias and myself(didn't quite expect it though)

wow, lol. UHU! has produced 6 ex-co ppl out of the 10, so cool.

After all this, back to boring ol' hols. Tried to study but never got to it until yesterday which is just ONE WEEK BEFORE MIDYEARS!!! sigh, i better buck up and do well for my mid years man... oh yeah, i can't even complete the phy online assessment, EOM nowhere near completion and Econs project... what's that? What's more, Chinese A level ORAL is drawing near and i haven't done anything about it yet.

Oh yeah, got 3 of my teeth extracted under GA, curiously, the after effects wasn't as bad as when i extracted one the last time. But now my face is slightly swollen.
Slightly hard to eat too.

It's already the 3rd day of the last week of hols and all i've done is read through phy and chem notes. (and i'm bloggin now somemore)

The holidays always feels so empty, like something's missing. I would usually go out with friends during the breaks but this year, i haven't really gone out this time. I miss the weekly legion meetings at the Gift of Love Home, brings a bit of meaning back into life i guess. Haven't gone for weekday mass lately too.

Once again, i'm just drifting along, seemingly without a purpose. Maybe it's just life, let's just see what God has planned for me for the next few weeks. Hopefully, things'll get better when school starts. (not that the exams are good) :p

JamJosh

Birthdays are fun

2007-05-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

haha... started out a bad day...
woke up late... got to school at 7.30am... found out that we were doing that stupid skit in front of assembly to advertise for stupid healthy lifestyle week... then got asked by the 2 teachers in charge of the Temasek Seminar thingy (5 of us chosen) to go for interview later in the day which was directly after a physics test which i completely screwed up...

other than that, the rest of the day wasn't too bad... mainly cuz it was one of the rare days with no chinese period. oh yeah, chem test - obviously failed lah (17/40 - not bad leh) but slightly consoled by the fact that our class had only 2 passes and there were less than 20 passes across the level. Champion right?

interview was fine, i think that was my best interview ever which is slightly ironic as i didn't exactly want to be the coordinator for the temasek seminar thingy (biting off more than i can chew i suppose.)

Went for the Ascension mass prep thingy, after that, we headed to the guitar room where Ms Teh was jus about to release the rest. It was kinda hilarious.

Oh yeah, have to go to school by 6.45 tmr for mass...

Then went to matt's class, play bridge with cards made from chalk and black paper (done by Liselle and Clarabelle i think) while waiting for Anthea to finish a KI exam (so early!!!) Then we went to MadJacks for dinner together, kinda celebrate the fact that our whole campaigning group got into council... then again, 80% of those running got in. Some photos, lame conversations and then matt and i went to get some 'important' stuff. read on if u wanna know what these important stuff's for. (be4 i forget, we got our class shirt today :) )

We went to NTUC since all the other shops were closed. We got a "On Your Wedding Day..." Card, some candles, matches and a Sara Lee Blueberry Cake. We dragged our guitars the whole way. We went outside, decorated the card, wrote some interesting stuff (rite qinrui?), put the candles on the cake (the box actually), lit them up (a whole lot of them), called qinrui and asked him to come out of his house. There, i played the guitar (the HAPPY BIRTHDAY SONG - which we jus learnt :) ) while Matto sand (yes he really did... lucky neighbours didn't complain) and we surprised seet. :) that was damn fun. While we were lighting the candles earlier on, people passed by and stared at us, they must have thought we were druggies or sumthing lol.

Came back home and now... about to finish up our GPP thingy. Be4 i go, some pics.

JamJosh

Fine...

2007-05-01T01:41:00.000-07:00

Fine... I realise I haven't been posting lately. I guess it's just so sian... Anyway, I said I was going to blog about certain things and that I shall.

Hmm... Joel's (aka DH) birthday. We went to Suntec to eat... because of SOMEONE... who just wanted to spend more time OUT of the house... with his phone... From Plaza Sing to Suntec, damn stupid lah, in the end we eat at Fish & Co, Macs and KFC which Plaza Sing ALSO has...

Matthias is crazy... for those who dun know mat, he's also known as German... now... you should have heard of him. Anyway, he's like a bottomless pit. He CAN EAT!! He ate salad and fish & chips at fish & co. (that is already extremely filling btw) Then he decided that he was still hungry and we went to KFC. He ate the new cheese thingy meal thingy AND the oriental chicken salad. That was course 2 and 3. Then we decided to go to BK for more but since it was closed, we went to Macs. Joel said he'll sponsor the 4th course and i offered to sponsor 5th and 6th. We didn't know he would actually take up the offer. 4th course was a BIG Mac. 5th and 6th were both double cheese burgers. Oh yeah, he also ate half my ice cream sundae cuz i couldn't finish it. I couldn't finish my ice cream and he managed to eat all that and still NOT be not hungry.

Last friday, legion gang went out to celebrate some b'days. Fun of course, but i won't elaborate.

Oh yeah... I almost forgot... campaigning period is just over. For those who still dun know... I AM RUNNING FOR Student Council Catholic Activities Wing. VOTE FOR ME OK?!?! That is if you think I should be in it. That's up for debate. But anyway... I'm campaigning with Matthias (T15), Liselle (T15)and Piong (T08). We also attended a nominees camp. It was quite fun but nothing much to talk about except that i was freaking worried bout my interview. I think i strayed off 4 different questions lol. A bit funny come to think of it.

Anyway... I NEED YOUR Votes!!! We're (Colour)ific! So what are you (white)ing for? (orange) you gonna vote for us? come on, dun be a (beige) and vote for us! (yellow)? You there? (Gold) and vote for us. Seriously, we're (gray)t!!!

Guitar... i just got a C-80. My old guitar was too hard to play, the strings were too high from the board.

Right now... I'm trying to learn a number of songs on the guitar...
1. You & Me
2. Faraway
3. If Everyone Cared
4. Hero
5. Penny & Me
6. When The Stars Go Blue
7. Collide
8. I'm Still Here
9. Iris
10. Wordplay
11. Adrienne
12. Our Lives
13. Does Anybody Hear Her
14. Praise You In This Storm
15. Leaving On A Jetplane

hmm... just to name a few... yup

i think i need to finish my PI draft. let's see... lot's of maths hw... chem tut... chinese test (confirm die one)... chem test next week... voting for council!!!!!!

hmm yeah... btw... gossiping is become damn sian liao... must go find something more interesting to do...

Phew...

2007-04-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

These few weeks have been really hectic. haha i just found out (yes... while i'm typing this post) that hao pu's the incoming csm. lol. And this year's Annual Parade is in June.

Hmm let's see. Lots and lots of tests, overdue HW (actually more like to-be-overdue HW), matt just asked me to go some Blue Moo thingy with his classmates, thinking that Science Honours isn't the right cca for me (my interest is guitar and I think that would be a better choice), PE was fun today (drain exploration!! how cool was that? Mr Isaac Lim's stories always link up very nicely, they are (curiously) so much more meaningful after PE.

Basically, that's it. Oh yeah, Mr Ang's b'day over. Joel's and Gabriel's b'day coming up. Gabriel's is tomorrow, which is FRIDAY THE 13th, which is also the day we have 2 tests. Pro right?

Anyways... gotta go and TRY to study.

Out...

confused liao...hmmm...

2007-03-31T02:13:00.000-07:00

hmm... about what u say?

student council OR science honours OR guitar club

2 maybe can lah but definitely cannot all 3. any advice? anyone?

i like sc, leadership positions always make me more enthu (although i always try to be enthu)as can be seen in sji. i might even do better academically WITH leadership positions cuz i will feel the need to justify me having such a position. PLUS, organising school activities will be fun, and being good for one's resume doesn't hurt. bad thing - a lot of time! and can i even get in?

i like guitar too cuz it somehow reminds me of legion. i like the guitar (interest!!). bad thing - syf once every 2 years and it is this year meaning i won't have anything much to show for 2 years since i am NOT in syf

i like the idea of science honours cuz i got a certain interest in some aspects of science. plus it will be good for my prospects and increases my chance of being able to get scholarships. mugging as a cca won't hurt either and would probably help me in academia. will definitely help me get nyaa gold. bad thing - supposed to hand in form yesterday...

so? any suggestions?

maybe prayer will help but i'm still open to any comments. that is if people still bother reading my retarded posts.

Hamster got a haircut :p

2007-03-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

I feel so ego having a picture of myself on my blog... (make sense?nvm) Matthias and Hubert convinced me to try something different this time. And I finally did IT. (dun think sick guys and girls... especially the girls and one MAN in 14... so sick lor)Talk about peer pressure. No lah, actually been thinking about it for some time. Oh yeah, I think this is the first time I did not go to a barber. On less ego-ey stuff... first time I acutally got a warning for my school attire by a teacher lor. Damn funny, and a bit shocking too.

Hmmm... I still got lots of HW.

Oh yeah, Marcus b'day - 24th March , Xiang Fei - 22nd March, mine (being ego again) - 21st March. Quite fun lah, people using birthdays to waste time during lesson. The class sang for each period lol. Dinner with family that day and had a dinner with Legion ancient people at fish & co 2 days ago (friday). Once again Thanks guys (and gals) for everything.

Now that's done... BF2 (thanks Sim, Horse and Bird for that) or HW (thanks teachers)... which one now? hmmm...

Class Outing: ICE SKATING!!!!

2007-03-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

Part I - First thing I said when I started to 'skate' - "OUCH!" I slipped and fell after my fifth 'step'. I must have caused an earthquake haha. Anyway, REWIND!!!! We were supposed to meet at Jurong East MRT at 9.30 sharp (rite...) As I expected... only Marie turned up early. The rest of us came late. I reached half hour late I think. We sat outside the control station and the four of us (martin, marie, jia yi, myself) just 'birdshitted' for a while. It was quite interesting actually. Other than Martin, the rest of us sat there thinking we were waiting for Mandy to appear... as it turns out... she was still snoring away. (jus a figure of speech, not really saying u snore... wait... do u? lol) Anyway... he told us after quite a while and went into Jurong Entertainment Centre to meet Marcus. A reallllllllyyyyy enthu christian was trying to convert him and so, we stood by the side waiting for that guy to finish talking to marcus. Oh yeah, on the way there, we called Man...dy a few times. We thought she picked up and slammed the phone down (curious since we called her handphone). I thought she was still trying to sleep or busy talking to someone else but as it turned out, she was bathing then... (che... thought she dao lor)(trying to make this post as long as possible so bear with it hehe)

Part II - Man-dy came soon after. Xiang Fei also came shortly after. (yay he got into CJC!!) Then we went ice skating. (it was already 11+ lol) Marcus and Xiang Fei went to play pool instead... class spirit lah... anyway... I was the only one there with no experience blading or skating as EVERYONE could tell. I felt so noob lol. Heck, it was fun anyways. I practically moved at a snail's pace... no wait... a snail could be said to be moving as fast as lightning compared to me. I was concentrating so much on the 'movement' that I perspired worse than when I had mass PE in CJC and THAT is saying a lot... sigh... I just realised that I'm so cold that even all the ice at ice palace still makes me feel hot... lol... oh yeah... let's seeeee... I believe I fell 2 or 3 times: first on my own, I brought down Marie (is it?) and Mandy on the second (during the choo choo train eheheh). I stopped after managing to go round the rink like 5 times without help. Took me a hell lot of time to do that so I beg whoever's reading this to NOT brush it off. *DPH pleading, looking very cute* haha.

Part III - waited for the rest to finish skating and joined our spectators who had finished pooling. I carried like 4 bags and 4 pairs of shoes all the way to the opposite side, I must have looked a bit crazy haha. Then Jethro arrived. Came so late because he woke up late because he slept at 3am in the morning because he went partying or something because it was the holidays because it says so in the calendar because the government made it so because blah blah... because God made it so. :).

Part IV - DONE with ice skating, I left with a slightly lighter wallet and a few bruises and of course with a smile... it was fun overall I guess.

Part V - No... I'm not done... if you managed to read all the way until here, you must have a hell lot of patience or you could be just like me... very bored and with nothing better to do after eating. Continuing (did i mispell it?)

Part VI - Ate lunch. Under Martin's ORDERS, we split up and went to buy our food. We were supposed to meet back at the lift to eat there but we ended getting chased away by security. Great idea dude... Then we moved slightly to the side and got chased away by a different security guard... we then moved to a secluded area near a staircase and ended getting chased away by the second security guard. If you're not confused... you were there,so dun ask. (i do not make sense...) We ended up eating at the food court.

Part VII - Played at the arcade for a while... then I had to leave. (I said bye lor clarisse, maybe you didn't hear lah). Mandy and Marie also left.

Part VIII - Boring... listening to music on the train back... the songs are stated in my previous post with the addition of a few linkin park and sherwood songs.

Part IX - You're crazy if you're still reading this but... I have crazy friends hehe. Dinner with family, 13 or 12 people. Then went to nearby park to play badminton with cousins and sis and mom. Came back... bathed... typing whatever I've typed so far and now a few pics from the outing... craps... (i dun know how to add it behind... if i'm not wrong it should be at the front of the post or something lah)

DPH aka JJ signing out...

blah blah blah

2007-03-17T05:56:00.000-07:00

K... so many people seems so depressed these days... and i just so happen to be listening to a few songs, one of which has the perfect message for you people who are deppressed... ok... nvm... i just realised i misintepreted the song... heck... just for fun... so many '...' lol... wow... really nothing better to do man...

so here's the song... wait... heck... it's too long... nvm... cheer up whoever's depressed or upset... k?

k... so instead... here's a list of songs i'm listening to... enjoy... (enjoy what i also dun know)...

Tenacious D - Tribute
Take That - Shine
Muse - Starlight
Boys Like Girls - Five Minutes To Midnight
Katharine McPhee - Over It
Jackie Chan and Kim Hee-Seon - Mei Li De Shen Hua
Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race
U2 & Green Day - The Saints Are Coming
The Killers - Read My Mind
Blue October - Into The Ocean
Thirteen Senses - Into The Fire
3 Doors Down - Away From The Sun
and a few others...

Orientation 02 2007 - Remix and March Holidays

2007-03-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

Orientation 2 was rather short I guess, only 4 days instead of 6 like orientation 1. It had 6 houses instead of 4 though. The first day began with us checking out which IG we were in. I have to say that they really did a good job shuffling everyone about, I knew almost no one. Maybe Su Yi (scholar aka the piano girl), Elyssa from council internship, Bronson, Benson and Jonathan from SJI but that was it. Well... it was rather boring although I expected it to be more fun having been in CJC for 3 months already. I stoned mostly, waiting til the day we got our class posting.
Second day was slightly more fun... Police Academy!!! Which meant getting really dirty :p. Oh yeah, before that we had mass dance practice. I got called up on stage with a few others (I still haven't found out who "saboe'd" me...). Since the whole orientation was cut short, we had house night that day. Nothing much to say.

Third day can be said to be the highlight of orientation. We found out our class posting and we had some ice breakers. It was kind of amusing since OUR APPEAL GOT THROUGH!!! We got back our old class, just that we are now 1T14 instead of 1T27. We lost a few members but we now have some new faces. Not really new though, I already knew most of them before hehe. We also had CCA 'orientation'. I went for council. We prepare stuff for ROCKAFELLA 3!! It was really cool. Daniel played as part of Pen Ink Mutiny (they're on Youtube lol). Most of the bands were really good. There are too many interesting things to describe and so... I shall not bother. SOOORRRRRYYYY!! If you weren't there... you loser. Anyway, stayed back till 11 plus to help keep the chairs and equipment etc. Marie, too bad you weren't there :(

Fourth day... hasn't arrived yet lol. It should be dragon boating if I'm not wrong. YAY it's with the class. Oh yeah, our class cheer - "ROW ROW ROW YOUR BOAT, GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM, WHEN YOU SEE T14, DON'T FORGET TO SCREAM AHHH!!!(girly scream)"

Now, that's about it for orientation. As for the March holidays... I shall mug (rite...), go out with friends, have a tooth extracted (i hate needles as my sis will gladly tell any of you), visit legionaries and sjabbers, sleep and eat.

BTW, I'm bored... my stupid ps2 controller's spoilt... sigh...

DPH logging out...

Finally!

2007-02-27T01:07:00.000-08:00

YAY!!! I can finally blog again!!! (maybe I should have just used another com to blog I guess... but still...) Ok. Recent stuff that happened... recently... New laptop... Econs project (damn lame lah)... A few CAs (OMG i think my chinese will do better than my GP)... SJI people thinking of going out on sat... 1T27 thinking of going out on fri... Cornystoners going out on sun... SJAB thinking of doing something sometime soon... yeah... that SHOULD be all.

A lot of super lame stuff happened but unfortunately, I cannot remember most of them. The most vivid one was the time Man...dy asked Andrew "how long ur thing ar?"(She was talking about his part of the econs project) We then found out it was roughly 1m..(min) long LOL!! Man... are u sick... sigh... Lots of bridge and dai dee in class too.

I really haven't been doing much at all... really. Now student council interns also got nothing much left to do, used to be rather busy (I'm not complaining) though. What else to blog about... ooh... I got som... no... a lot of photos that I could use to blackmail bert and I will post them once I get the chance to compile them first. So be patient girls (including bert)... and Jia Yi. HAHAHAHA...

I hope our petition to stay as a class after second intake is approved. Those who are staying are staying mainly because of the class I think, no wait, I know.

Finally... umm... happy belated Valentine's/Friendship/Blood donation day and happy Chinese New Year to anyone who STILL reads my blog.

Hmmm...wow... yes I agree... (a 1T27 inside thingy)

Da Pink Hamster (i also dunno why) signing off...

CJC

2007-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

wow... it's already been 3 weeks into JC life. For those who still read my blog (yay), you'll know that there's a huge gap missing from december last year to... uh... today. Basically, it's been extremely fun. Especially orientation. I won't go into too much details (u can prob check out what we did from other people's blogs) but finale night + mass dance was really memorable. GO MAPLEMAN! I took some cool pics too!

Oh yeah, despite plans to join ODAC... I didn't because I finally realised that that would be plain suicide. So here I am now... a Guitar club member. LOL Guitar club reminded me of Legion a great deal and it is rather fun. I've already signed on for internship for student council. I really hope that I can get in later on although I seriously dislike the campaigning portion. I'll not worry about it first though... I need to go do some HW. Curiously, my class seems to like doing HW...

hmm... CJC's a good school contrary to popular belief. The teacher's are really good, some of them remind me of SJI's teachers lol. Anyway, I think I better start preparing for Cornerstone session this sunday so...

james signing out...

Cornerstone Retreat/Camp 2006 28-29 Dec

2006-12-30T23:39:00.000-08:00

K. Cornerstone Retreat/Camp 2006 was definitely a success and a fitting closure to the year 2006! It was a cool experience to be truly honest and there were times when I was truly able to feel God's wonderful presence with us in a real and tangible way. Here are some pictures to get a rough idea of what I'm talking about.

One of these experiences was at the AWWA (Asian Women's Welfare Association or sumthing) where we visited some really special children. The AWWA was helping these people by providing a daycare of sorts. It was really a touching site... literally.

The first thing we got were hugs by the children and they refused to let go. At least for the 4 of us (Christian, Xavier, Victoria and myself) who went to explore a bit first. I guess the first child we met was... hmm sorry I can't remember his name but he was wheelchair bound. A future flirt lol. He likes only girls, seriously, I'm not joking. At least he was enjoying himself :)

I had a great deal of admiration for those who decided that the time spent with these special children was worthwhile and I totally get why they would do so. I won't go on with the details but we played games and sang with them later in the afternoon. Oh yeah, Jason slipped and fell on the way there and hurt his head. Hopefully, it'll be nothing serious. Anyway, I met this really cool dude. He couldn't participate cuz his wheelchair was spoilt and the only one left was too small for him. (this is another guy) His name is WeiKang. He cannot fully control his muscles or something. When he gets excited, his muscles cramp up and his fingernails will dig into his skin. They bleed at times which is why he has a special ball (like a stress ball) to hold. Unfortunately, he dropped his and he was in pain. I joined 2 other volunteers from RGS(or was it RJC?). We let him grip our hands so that he doesn't injure himself. We teased him about Eunice (a professional help giver person thingy). You guys won't get it but I think Jason does. One thing's for sure, he likes his cool shades, potato chips, bananna chips, oreos and Eunice. At the sound of E. , his face turns completely red. After the 2 volunteers left to do other stuff, Jason and I kept him company till leaving time. It was cool! It was a joy that nothing else in the world can give you. The joy of helping others wholeheartedly. When we did finally leave... everything looked so much more beautiful and the rain felt like showers of blessings from God.

Then came the time for renewal of faith. Everyone was nervous. bert about screwing up one of his songs (he was playing for PnW), vic about not being able to pull it off, myself about the session not being very meaningful etc. A big thanks to GOD that we pulled through and everyone who helped or participated in some way. Even Qinrui helped :) Matt, thanks for giving me a rough idea what renewal of faith struck you as. It helped alot. For those that don't understand, none of the priests were free to come down to SFX for confession. That however was to have been an important part in renewal of our faith. Instead, we decided to use an essay entitled THE ROOM. ( this will be a rather long post... )

For those who want to renew their faith and relationship with the bigmanupstairs... please take the time to read this email...

17-year-old Brian Moore had only a short time to write something for a class. The subject was what Heaven was like. "I wowed 'em," he later told his father, Bruce. "It's the best thing I ever wrote.." It also was the last. Brian's parents had forgotten about the essay when a cousin found it while cleaning out the teenager's locker at Teary Valley High School. Brian had been dead only hours, but his parents desperately wanted every piece of his life near them - notes from classmates and teachers, his homework. Only two months before, he had handwritten the essay about encountering Jesus in a file room full of cards detailing every moment of the teen's life. But it was only after Brian's death that Beth and Bruce Moore realized that their son had described his view of heaven. "It makes such an impact that people want to share it. You feel like you are there." Mr. Moore said. Brian Moore died May 27, 1997. He was driving home from a friend's house when his car went off Bulen-Pierce Road in Pickaway County and struck an utility pole. He emerged from the wreck unharmed but stepped on a downed power line and was electrocuted. The Moores framed a copy of Brian's essay and hung it among the family portraits in the living room. "I think God used him to make a point. I think we were meant to find it and make something out of it," Mrs. Moore said of the essay. She and her husband want to share their son's vision of life after death. "I'm happy for Brian. I know he's in heaven. I know I'll see him."

Brian's Essay: The Room

In that place between wakefulness and dreams, I found myself in the room. There were no distinguishing features except for the one wall covered with small index card files. They were like the ones in libraries that list titles by author or subject in alphabetical order. But these files, which stretched from floor to ceiling and seemingly endless in either direction, had very different headings.

As I drew near the wall of files, the first to catch my attention was one that read "Girls I have liked." I opened it and began flipping through the cards. I quickly shut it, shocked to realize that I recognized the names written on each one. And then without being told, I knew exactly where I was.

This lifeless room with its small files was a crude catalog system for my life. Here were written the actions of my every moment, big and small, in a detail my memory couldn't match. A sense of wonder and curiosity, coupled with horror, stirred within me as I began randomly opening files and exploring their content. Some brought joy and sweet memories; others a sense of shame and regret so intense that I would look over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching.

A file named "Friends" was next to one marked "Friends I have betrayed." The titles ranged from the mundane to the outright weird "Books I Have Read," "Lies I Have Told," "Comfort I have Given," "Jokes I Have Laughed at." Some were almost hilarious in their exactness: "Things I've yelled at my brothers." Others I couldn't laugh at: "Things I Have Done in My Anger", "Things I Have Muttered Under My Breath at My Parents." I never ceased to be surprised by the contents.

Often there were many more cards than I expected. Sometimes fewer than I hoped. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the life I had lived. Could it be possible that I had the time in my years to fill each of these thousands or even millions of cards? But each card confirmed this truth. Each was written in my own handwriting. Each signed with my signature.

When I pulled out the file marked "TV Shows I have watched", I realized the files grew to contain their contents. The cards were packed tightly, and yet after two or three yards, I hadn't found the end of the file. I shut it, shamed, not so much by the quality of shows but more by the vast time I knew that file represented.

When I came to a file marked "Lustful Thoughts," I felt a chill run through my body. I pulled the file out only an inch, not willing to test its size and drew out a card. I shuddered at its detailed content.

I felt sick to think that such a moment had been recorded. An almost animal rage broke on me.
One thought dominated my mind: "No one must ever see these cards! No one must ever see this room! I have to destroy them!" In insane frenzy I yanked the file out. Its size didn't matter now. I had to empty it and burn the cards. But as I took it at one end and began pounding it on the floor, I could not dislodge a single card. I became desperate and pulled out a card, only to find it as strong as steel when I tried to tear it. Defeated and utterly helpless, I returned the file to its slot.

Leaning my forehead against the wall, I let out a long, self-pitying sigh.And then I saw it.. The title bore "People I Have Shared the Gospel With." The handle was brighter than those around it, newer, almost unused. I pulled on its handle and a small box not more than three inches long fell into my hands. I could count the cards it contained with one hand.

And then the tears came. I began to weep. Sobs so deep that they hurt. They started in my stomach and shook through me. I fell on my knees and cried. I cried out of shame, from the overwhelming shame of it all. The rows of file shelves swirled in my tear-filled eyes. No one must ever, ever know of this room. I must lock it up and hide the key. But then as I pushed away the tears, I saw Him.

No, please not Him. Not here. Oh, anyone but Jesus. I watched helplessly as He began to open the files and read the cards. I couldn't bear to watch His response. And in the moments I could bring myself to look at His face, I saw a sorrow deeper than my own.

He seemed to intuitively go to the worst boxes. Why did He have to read every one? Finally He turned and looked at me from across the room. He looked at me with pity in His eyes. But this was a pity that didn't anger me. I dropped my head, covered my face with my hands and began to cry again. He walked over and put His arm around me. He could have said so many things. But He didn't say a word. He just cried with me.

Then He got up and walked back to the wall of files. Starting at one end of the room, He took out a file and, one by one, began to sign His name over mine on each card. "No!" I shouted rushing to Him. All I could find to say was "No, no," as I pulled the card from Him. His name shouldn't be on these cards. But there it was, written in red, so rich, so dark, so alive. The name of Jesus covered mine. It was written with His blood. He gently took the card back. He smiled a sad smile and began to sign the cards. I don't think I'll ever understand how He did it so quickly, but the next instant it seemed I heard Him close the last file and walk back to my side. He placed His hand on my shoulder and said, "It is finished." I stood up, and He led me out of the room.

There was no lock on its door.

There were still cards to be written.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."- Philippians 4:13.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." - John 3:16

Hopefully, this essay will touch your heart as it did mine.

What would our cards say?
The blood of the lamb covers our sins.
We are cleansed by his blood.
Are we showing our gratitude to him by the way we live our lives now?

God bless, have a Blessed Christmas and New Year ahead.

Joshua

PS: Once again, THANK YOU to all who participated and helped in this retreat!

Merry CHRISTmas!!!!!

2006-12-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

K... let's see... went for pageant and midnight mass. SUPPOSED to discuss stuff about the camp before BUT we couldn't do much lol. Hahaha... Better start praying if we hope to get everything done.

Anyway... i feel so bad lol. I forgot about Christmas cards completely this year. I got so many of them after midnight mass too... Haha... The guilt is overwhelming. Really!

Oh yeah... had to upgrade my ipod to a nano. Long story and i shall not bore anyone reading this with it. BTW, forgot to add one more thing to the did during the holidays list - visited josh's (jesse's) blog. LOL the comics are cool haha.

One last thing - Cornystoners, check your mailbox in our room when you come for the retreat :p Too bad i didn't BUY any cards.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No Idea What The Title Should Be

2006-12-19T17:36:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delayed update. My computer was ehhh... near impossible to switch on. I think it doesn't like me. Anyway, the song I was talking about in my last post, no longer stuck in my head and in fact, is becoming slightly irritating. ipod battery also not working properly so I haven't used it in quite a long time which is definitely a shame.

Ok... let's see. What's been going on in my life during the holidays... Completed FFXII, watched 2 or 3 episodes of Nip/Tuck (fine... it was quite good, just a bit sick at times), tried to switch on com many many many many many many many times, went out with friends, Legion meetings (i slipped on a big puddle of water and fell into mud... noooo... lol... the one who carried the stuff got more dirty than the people who played soccer haha), Cornerstone meetings, made some funny concoction and stupidly paid Jeremy one buck to drink it (he enjoyed it thoroughly, the drink is made up of a tiny bit of sprite and sparkling juice with the main ingredients being bandung and kickapoo - the acid curdles the milk according to Matthias) at the Christmas gathering at Melvin's place, going out again tomorrow, read newsweek and falling way behind, celebration of 4 years in SJI with Mr Ang (we got him a Waterman Pen with "Hot and Single" engraved on it hehe), Adelaide and Kangaroo Island, boredom at times, eating and basically sleeping. [These events are not placed in any particular order] (lol).

I wonder what JC would be like... CJC in particular. I only just realised how many people were going to CJC from Legion and Church. Those that I know will go CJC for first 3 months - myself, mat, bert, joel, dominic, josh, marcus(maybe), dan, simeon, xavier, is aloy going? At least I will know some people there. A big change for me would be studying in the same school as girls since for 10 years I've only been in an all boys school. Hope they won't be too much of a distraction lol.

One last thing, I should probably start attending daily mass again. Let's go mass Qinrui if you're not too busy with NJC stuff already.
Josh signing out.

Stuck In My Head :P

2006-11-25T04:52:00.000-08:00

This song is seriously nice! It's been stuck in my head lol. Enjoy! Take That (first time I've heard of them) with their song Patience. The rest are random vids.Oh Yeah! Check out the Casting Crowns song - Does Anybody Hear Her. A Favourite of mine.

Interesting to note... Avril Lavigne's I'm With You seems to complement Does Anybody Hear Her. The song is really inspirational, serious, not joking, really. A mission call from God. Will we pick it up? It's our choice but I hope the answer's clearer now.

"All the lost and lonely people. Searching for the hope that's tucked away in you and me. Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?"

"She is running, a hundred miles an hour, in the wrong direction..."

Will we have the courage to reach out? Will we get the chance to?

Hmmm... YaY?

2006-11-21T05:14:00.000-08:00

What can I say? The Os are over!!!!!!! No more studying!!!!(I really didn't hardcore mug lah so before and after also feel relax hehe)

For those who wondered why I had not updated my blog for... abou... uhh... an extremely long time, it's because I could not switch my computer on since about one week before the Os. A sign from God? Lol. Maybe.

Tsk tsk, I felt quite disappointed with myself for certain papers especially elective History. A Maths Paper 2... stupid permutation question... Hubert and myself saw that it was worth six marks and thought must be super hard. We took the 13 entertainers as seperate even though the comedians and the other group WAS the entertainers. Ans was around 2 million possibilities lah. Elective was crazy. Could only do Treaty of Versaille and even then, I forgot all relevant information during the exam. Crapped up half an essay for first part and one full (but total bullshit) essay for the second part. SBQ - I had no idea what the Great Leap Forward was about :p.

DESPITE all this... I still HAVE and WANT to thank God. For many things: that the Os are over, the time I had and will still have with my friends, everyone who encouraged and motivated me to continue studying even though I had almost no juice left, for my iPod given to me by my parents (it proved invaluable in helping me concentrate), Hsuan Te our class chairman who graciously opened the class for the rest to mug before the exams, the disappearing haze... etc and most recently FINAL FANTASY XII (FFXII). I'm crazy about this game haha. Its like playing a movie with the only difference being I get to kill some monsters :P.

When everything seems to be so wonderful now that the REAL holidays are here, PAE!! Now we have to choose the place we want to go to after secondary education. 4 years have passed so quickly. Too bad but I guess life still has to go on. CJC, NYJC or SAJC... sigh... I probably should go for mass to pray about it.

And I quote from the earlier video on my blog - 'Whatever dude...'

JamJosh signing off

Muggin made fun

2006-10-24T06:57:00.000-07:00

Technically, the idea of mugging made fun is technically impossible to achieve. What I meant to say mugging made slightly more fun. Since school ended, I've been mugging non stop except for weekends and 2 other days. Mostly in school. Our Class Chairman Hsuan Te has so graciously offered to help the rest of us muggers-to-be by... opening the classroom doors. Shockingly, these sessions were really effective! (one maths question a week to one paper a day - huge improvement lol) Optimum number of people is around 8-10 people. Not enough to create chaos and enough people to ask for help if one gets stuck doing one question.

So many snacks too! We still have drinks and food from last week in the cupboard. If we forget to clear... then next year's class of 434 will have some stored decomposing food in the cupboard generously donated from us current sec4s.

Anyway... I'm real scared about my Literature paper now. I need one humanities to do well but my elec hist is really bad and I ain't doing as well as I hope to do for Lit (as seen during prelims). Moreover, I don't know how to study for LITERATURE!!!! NOOOO! People who think that literature is really easy... please don't assume this is true for everyone. Oh yeah, bio prac also screwed up. I didn't see petri dishes to put the LARGE onion rings so I stupidly used the smaller rings and stuffed them into the little solution-containing containers. I hope they changed the solutions. If not... the next few people who get my solutions would have been screwed too.

What's done is done... now physics prac. It's just 2 DAYS away!!!

Oh yeah, today was quite interesting since us it's Hari Raya and it's duh.. a public holiday. Us corney-stoners decided to mug at Xavier's house. Tried to study lit but failed miserably. Helped other people with phy and chem (when they needed help)and in the process, also revise. Jac tried to help me with Lit but I just suck at Literary analysis I guess. We had a few breaks though. Pool, table tennis and lunch. That was real fun, seriously. Anway, hub and simeon tried table tennis too. It was hilarious actually. When simeon left the room, we realised that hub was the only person not an ex-table tennis school team player for St Gab's. Lol. Even then, I think I was the worst table tennis player who WAS an ex school team player there. Quite funny :) too long never play table tennis liao plus so long never exercise. Qinrui, Matthias! Remember ah! After O's everyday go and train! We went mass later, reaching just in time. Then a few of us went to Market to eat dinner.

Dear God, help us during this period of time. When everything is looking down, remind us that you have a plan for us all and that you will always be there to guide us even through the tough times. We all want to do well but let your will be done, not ours.

James signing out! :p

PARALITURGY and Last Day In SJI (officially) (cont'd)

2006-10-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

Finally! The continuation... I guess I haven't exactly kept my promise to update my blog after bio prac. Well, it is getting much closer to the O's and I don't feel one bit prepared. I'm wondering why am I even on the computer now typing this post.

Anyway, Paraliturgy was certainly long but it was meaningful. Had a lot of fun with my friends but we didn't really have to be sad at all. We still meet in school to study (with the exception of the scholars though). 434 people are crazy and I think all you 434 people know what I mean. The evidence is on Youtube. For those not in 434, don't bother, it's an inside (about to be outside) thing.

Looking back on my 4 years here in SJI, I realise that I have so much to be thankful for. My friends, teachers, the school environment(???), God's presence in my life and not to forget the people who sometimes irritate and bring out the worst in me. Why did I mention those people? Well, without them, I would never really know myself completely. I would never be able to grow as a person, to learn from the mistakes that I have and would have made.

Just to name a few people who have really made an impact on my life (especially these 4 years in SJI): Mr Dominic Ang, Ms Deborah Goh, Matthias, Qinrui, Jason Sin, Hubert, Jason Lim (of whom I have know for 8 years), Marcus Leong, Joel Sim, Chin Hao, Dominic Chia, Joshua Wong, Gabriel Rod, Timothy Siew, Augustine... and the list goes on.

Sorry, really have no time. Need to study for Lit! Wah... Just realised its on the 2nd of november and this is already the 24th of october.

PARALITURGY and Last Day In SJI (officially)

2006-10-16T09:10:00.000-07:00

Post to be cont'd after biology practical!! No time to write hehe... but in the meanwhile, here's a short video clip about fun stuff we did on that day. This one's about Hsuan Te (class chairman) doing his thing with a helium balloon. Haha, didn't think that it was really possible. ENJOY!

Oh My GOSH!!!!

2006-10-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Wow... after tuition, Matthias, my sis (Grace), my cousin (Clair), my parents and myself squeezed into a car meant for roughly five people heading towards CJC Open House. Now I feel so 'depressed'... We were quite excited, especially myself since I convinced myself that this was going to be my new school. I was quite sure of myself and thought that my mind was set. Boy did my confidence in CJC shake after the open house. To be honest, other than the fact that they had a very good character development programme and humanities programme, nothing else really impressed me. The facilities were... ummm... how do I put it... not as I hoped it would be. Even our tour guide, a former Josephian, said that other than the library and the gym, the rest of the facilities could not be compared to that in SJI. By the way... Matthias and I commented before that the library wasn't really that impressive. THAT was certainly disheartening. What made the open house not totally bad was the fact that I knew quite a number of people there. I saw James Chen (still remembered Sin described him as a hot hunk lol), some EX-SJAB seniors, people from church, the Peer Support Board. Then there was also the huge amount of Sec4s here for the open house.

Someone smsed me later to tell me that of all the oppen houses he went to... CJC was the worst and would not be one of his choices now. (he planning to replace it with SA) I have to admit, presentation was not of the 'good first impression' quality. At least the people in hospitality at the carpark were very friendly and welcoming.

Now, I ain't too sure about my choices now. It used to be so simple and clear cut, until I went for RJC open house. Sigh... Each JC has its own good points but now I have to weigh which one suits me better.

Alas, I have one more thing that I need to do first... discern whether it is my heart telling me to go CJC or is it just my mind playing tricks on me.

Here are some points that have crossed my mind...
CJC GOOD POINTS - Lots of friends going there and atmosphere/environment is the closest to that of SJI. It's also close to SJI and therefore surroundings would be familiar. It's relatively convienient going to and fro from school since there are direct buses. It's CATHOLIC. Mr Ang's for CJC. Rumours about having the highest birthrates and abortions compared to other JCs are false (someone debunked this rumour). Blue uniform (instead of white) which means it won't seem to get dirty so quickly. There IS a study environment (contrary to popular belief, just not like what one would see in other JCs). I've been told that at least 40% of the teachers are really good... when they are good. (???? Is that good or bad?)
CJC BAD POINTS - Facilities not even as good as SJI (it's a JC for *Pete's sake). The place looks so cramp like SJI sec 1 block. Rather small. Classroom size looks so cramp. Don't know what CCA to take up there (actually applies to other JCs too). Canteen is so warm. Don't know if I would regret going there after seeing the good points and bad points of other JCs.

SO... any advice? Anyone?

James out (and tired too)

PS: *Who's Pete anyway??? XD

Just thinking... (2)

2006-10-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

On the way back home, on the bus, I had a lot of time to think about school. You know... this being the last day of school.(for more details on my day... check last post hehe) Anyway, I was thinking about what subject combination I should take, CCA too. Then I began thinking about the subjects I was currently taking, especially Literature.

I began wondering why I even took literature in the first place. I was only doing so-so in sec 2. Then I realised... I loved reading (mostly in the past). By the way, for those who didn't know... my humanities cost me my below 10 points for L1R5. Suddenly, for some unknown reason, a line from one of my literature set texts, The English Teacher, struck me:

"... the annotator's desperate effort to convey a meaning, and the teacher's doubly desperate effort to WREST a meaning out of the poet and the annotator, the ESSENCE of an EXPERIENCE LOST in all this HANDLING".

This was perhaps the reason why I get less and less interested with Literature as a whole with each and every passing day. Trying to analyse, trying to explain with words alone the wonder and beauty that is Literature. For me, true literature would be immersing ourselves into the world in which the book was set, experiencing with our imagination. Every time I read story books, I feel like I'm a part of the book, an invisible viewer who can just like any other character, use our five senses to feel/smell/see/hear/taste to 'be there'. Such experiences like many others, are priceless.

I just feel that learning the various literary devices the authors use like puns, irony, dramatisation, assonance, metaphors, similes, hyperbole etc are just very desperate efforts at trying to experience what could be done so easily with our imagination. Exams in addition to having to 'analyse' the texts just spoil this very experience. Notes/Common knowlegde tells us that ironic situations are so much more enjoyable when we do not have to explain the irony to anyone (or explain the effect it creates for that matter), yet we have to do just that during examinations. Ironical isn't it?

So, just to end this little post... Why do we take the subjects that we do take? Better prospects? It's the least boring choice? We want to do well and we therefore pick the 'easy' subjects? Strategic planning?

It's always interesting to know how the choices we make are governed right?

Last Day of School!!!

2006-10-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

Today was definitely an interesting day. Qinrui and myself went for a movie in the afternoon - You, Me & Dupree. It was hilarious. Too bad everyone else was at the various JC open houses. The movie wasn't really the main reason today was such an interesting day though...

The day started quite normally. Made it to school at roughly 7.15am and helped Qinrui with gate duty. (I just didn't want to go assembly... sssshh) Didn't really do much in school after that. Played a number of rounds of 4-In-A-Row with Wei An, Matthias started creating a martial arts manual. It included his, Hubert's, Qinrui's and my 'special attacks' - Power Zap, Power Flick, Power Grap and Power Pinch lol. Oh yeah, something real embarrassing happened. Matthias was also subscribing for Newsweek and he wanted to choose option A for the gifts. I offered to trade my option A gifts for the one he would get if he picked Option B. (I THOUGHT my mom wanted the chess set... I was wrong lol). We kept changing our minds and I think the guys at the booth were getting slightly 'pissed'. We went to change it back to set A again after I called my mom to double check. Matthias and I were too embarassed to ask for a change again so... Qinrui so graciously offered to help us change. (TY!)

Anyway, QInrui and I were trying to persuade other people to follow us to go watch a movie but most people went for RJC and TJC open house. Ended up with only both of us. Hubert did persuade us to follow him to go RJC open house first but he didn't follow us to watch a movie... Before we went to RJC though, we went QInrui's house first and we played his GRAND PIANO!!! His GRAND PIANO!!!!!!!

RJC was quite cool... and big... and the people were quite friendly. Serious, I'm not joking! We went there even though we knew it was near impossible for us to go there. We went there to 'jac' ourselves (haha). I bet Hub was disappointed he didn't see someone there.

Anyway, our guide, Kenneth, brought us around and he overheard us in the lift saying that Qinrui was going to NJC with DSA from canoeing. It was hilarious when we passed by a classroom FILLED with the canoeist (male and female) and Kenneth told them about Qinrui. Qinrui was really, truly 'jac'-ed. We were joking about how they were going to come after him for going to their 'opposition'. We left after seeing their library. Oh yeah, we also met other Josephians. They said that their 'smallest' Lecture Theatre was the size of our Performing Arts Centre(that is HUGE!).

TRIED persuading Hubert to follow us to watch a movie but failed miserably. Met Kuan Huai at J8, he just came from NYJC open house. He said it was good :).

While waiting for the movie to start, we went to popular to look at some A' Level books. (see the level of difficulty) It was quite heartening to see that a we could answer quite a number of Chemistry and Biology question. (I picked the answers in which I have at least heard of something in the answer before hehe) Came back home really tired with a number of computer games (recently bought, reallllllly recent, so recent this was the first time I saw them) on the computer table. I guess 'SOMEONEs' went on a shopping spree ( :P ).

James signing off :)

Just bored from the work

2006-10-10T03:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics I found on my computer. Legion Of Mary: QOAS!!!! and Cornerstone!! (I have nothing better to do I guess)

To Sin (or anyone else who can relate to it)

2006-10-10T01:45:00.000-07:00

WOW... didn't really know you were going through things like that. I haven't really faced such 'frustration' before so I cannot really understand it. Just a few things for you to know. (not from experience but from seeing how others face life)

Honour Your Father and Mother

I'm sure you know this rite 'Holy guy'? Hey, I'm not saying it's easy but that doesn't mean you should stop trying. It can be irritating at times when you feel... ummm... trapped with not being able to pursue what you think is best for yourself without having your parents support I guess. They'll realise it sooner or later. Don't forget the next thing.

God's Always There...

I'm sure he has something great planned for you, so just 'stay the course'. Tell him how you feel. All your frustration and anger, sadness... and don't forget your happiness. Times when you feel great. I'm sure he knows it but I'm also sure he'll be happier knowing that you want to share it with him.

We Are Too

SERIOUS! We won't joke about a friend's problems! It's fine if you want to talk to any of us, because we know we can talk to you too (if we have a problem, that is...)

Anyway, whatever and however you're going to do whatever (a bit general rite?)... Think it through first. I'm sure you'll pull through. We are all human but... we DO have the-big-man-upstairs' help :).

James signing off...

PS: Qinrui, Jason!!!!! Both of you can write Personal Recount what... (from your blogs). You guys have also been through a lot. [for really hopeless... i mean blur people... PS is Post-Script and not Playstation]

A wonderful song!

2006-10-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

This song rawks!!!!! It's from the series Touched By An Angel. A wonderful and beautiful show. Too bad they stopped the show in 2003. The song is by Jaci Velasquez, it's called 'God Loves You'. Here are the lyrics :)

In the quiet, love is reaching.
It's yours to hold,
Be still and know that
Even when you're lost and lonely,
And hope is gone, you're not alone.

Far beyond the understanding,
There's a hand that leads,
If you believe.

Through the darkness, see the light.
Remember God loves you.

The road ahead is long and winding.
With eyes of faith, you'll find the way, yeah.
And when the journey leaves you weary,
You can rest in the comfort of heaven's arms -
Sweet loving arms.

And peace will follow.
Peace be with you always,
As you go.
For now you know that...

Through the darkness, there's a light.
Remember God loves you.

When you open up your heart,
His love will meet you where you are.
He will always be a part of everything you do.
He is here to set you free,
And give you all the strength you need
To carry on, to carry on.

Through the darkness, see the light.
Remember God loves you. (remember, remember)
Remember God loves you.

Tell me if you want the song :)

Double Miracles!

2006-10-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Wow... today was just likem any other day after exams. So boring. Qinrui and I had agreed to go SFX to mug after school. We convinced Hubert to go too later. Two MIRACLES!!! Qinrui was the one who suggested going to church to mug and Hubert went for daily mass the 2nd time in A ROW!!!! Jason also came for mass (like usual hehe). I didn't really get much done. Take so long to finish half an English essay, even longer for one A Maths question and tried to study EH Gorby. Father Ho met Qinrui (yay) and now he shall be known as 'stingray' (??!?!?)

Today, the teachers were giving other school exam papers like nobody's business. Heard 432 people had 20 from various subjects. Damn sad lah.

=)I went for dinner with family and on the way home, I saw so many children at the park playing with lanterns. They all looked so happy. Not the type of happiness teens or adults usually experience. Their kind of fun is so innocent and... 'fun' type of fun. (make sense??) Come to think of it, the last time I played with a lantern was in Primary school.

Oh yeah! The Catholic news has some interesting articles this week. Especially the one on 'Are Muslims and Christians worshipping the same GOD?' Do read it.
James signing out hehe.

PS: I wonder when Matt is getting a blog...hmm

No life after and before exams...

2006-10-05T00:02:00.000-07:00

Prelims over... Yay... I think. Hmm. This is damn stupid lah, everytime before exam no life one because everyone all mugging. Then everytime after exam, also no life cuz a major exam is over and no one really wants to mug(that's me at least), even though Os not yet over. These days seem to take so long to pass by. Hehe even though school ends much earlier. Curious ain't it? Qinrui sabo me lah... telling Trent wasn't at duty :p . For those who didn't know, sec 4 prefects already stop duty but have to do for one or two weeks cuz the other levels have exams.

Grad day on last saturday. Damn stupid lah... I bought new WHITE shoes cuz mine all tattered. Then a day before grad day, they say prefects wearing blazer. Which means with BLACK shoes... Sheez. Anyway, it was a great day. LOL Principal called Agung Santoso Agung Sentosa 3 times. The guest of honour made an 'interesting' speech too. When Agung was making his speech, there was one part where it seemed like he was giving the cue for us to start clapping. I wasn't really listening and I 'accidentally' gave one very loud clap. I think Bro Mike looked in my direction... Damn embarrassing lah. After the thingy, my family and I went to Fish & Co for dinner (that's why I didn't follow you guys for dinner XD sorry!) OH YEAH! First time I looked good in a photo too, right Qinrui?

For more pics go Qinrui's blogs hehe (i still dun know how to link, i'll learn later)

Oh yeah, got back results (on mon). Now I was so greedy that day. I didn't study as much as I wanted to for Prelims and SERIOUSLY by the Grace of God, I managed to do quite well.

English A2 72
E Maths A1 78
A Maths A2 70
Biology A1 77
Chemistry A1 80
Physics A2 71
Literature B3 69!!!!!!!!!!!
Elec Hist+SS B3 65
Chinese (Os) B3 NA

I already know I want to go CJ and I also know with my L1R5, almost certainly can one. But still... I want to do better(duh). I was thinking... shoot... I still lost so many people. When I finally realised that I actually did quite well, I started to hope that I would do better in the other subjects which we hadn't gotten back the results yet.

Jason Lim and I went for Pam's Grandma's funeral mass at SFX yesterday(wed). Aloysius, Alyssa, Michelle and Sarah were also there I think. The priest managed to lighten the mood somewhat. He was a bit lame. Oh yeah Fr John came back to SFX for the mass. You know... after the mass, I realised that there was nothing I could say to Pam. What could I say? The priest did say that her Grandma was already in heaven... so I couldn't say I was sorry for her family or something. I couldn't congratulate her (duh) 'cause... you don't need me to explain. The only thing I was thinking at that point in time was my Granduncle's mother. She also passed away not too long ago but the funeral was soooo different. Yesterday, the whole church was packed with people. So you know she was/is loved. Soooo many friends and relatives. In contrast, my Granduncle's mother's funeral had barely 10 people if you exclude the choir. It definitely seemed as if the only reason there were people (other than family) there was because they pitied someone who had so few friends. I don't even remember her having friends actually.
The priest couldn't comfort the family members in any way too. It was just so sad. My Granduncle (her only son) works 2 shifts a day as a cleaner but still couldn't afford a proper wake. So the wake lasted just one day (few visitors too). My father and his siblings had to pay for the costs. What saddens me the most was that someone I knew had passed away, and all I knew about her was that she was slightly deaf, had a very filial son and she made the best Kiamcai soup that I ever tasted in my life (so far).

Btw... XD, bake more cookies!! They're great lol. (so anti climax... hehe)

Just thinking... (1)

2006-10-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

Already one week after SJI Sec4 RME Retreat 06. Time passes so quickly these days. These few days, one word has been striking me on the head incessantly(any guesses?) - 'Prophet'. For some curious reason, it has played quite a role in making me think these few days. For those who are clueless to what I'm talking about... the retreat had touched a bit on the topic of 'Prophets'. Anyway, i had 2 affirmations which described me somewhat as a prophet after that (i really didn't realise it at that time). Both were sincere and I really appreciate it. It's comforting to know that there are people who know what message I was trying to put forth that day. THANK YOU! I won't share anymore about that part... I think I've shared bordering on too much already.

I just watched One Tree Hill on Starworld. To be honest... I was quite shocked. It was like a sign from God, that the path less trodden, speaking out against certain injustices, was not going to be easy. Many still see that One Tree Hill, other than being a very good series and with many 'hot' actors and actresses, was basically about the screwed up lives of a few people interconnected in some complicated way or another. However, to my pleasant surprise... it was deeper. When I switched on the TV, they were showing the part about how one of the female characters was having an extremely difficult time at school. Rumours that she was gay (obviously not if you watched the beginning of the series)(we have the benefit of being able to see from various points of views unlike the characters so... what can I say?). Anyway, she knew that even little rumours could mean the end of one's social life etc. She tried to cope but apparently isn't doing so well. Anyway, she knew that the problem wasn't with the people like herself but the people who so readily breed such rumours and so on. She tried to make a statement (with a shirt) and later got suspended when she took off the shirt in the hallway when told it was against regulation. She relied on her friend to support her but because of fear of being ostracised, she did not.

Being a prophet, according to Br Gerard, is to be someone aware of the present day circumstances and someone who is willing to speak out for those who have no voice of their own. Even in the face of danger and persecution. The road won't be easy but when was it ever? I sincerely believe that God won't give anyone huge challenges without also giving the person the means to overcome it. (can you see the similarities between the prophet and that female character I was talking about?)

That 'friend' came up to her later in private and said she was inspired by the her actions. Then came the moral of the story... what's the use being inspired without doing anything? How can you make the difference so badly needed in society when we cannot find the strength to step out of our comfort zone? All it takes for evil to triumph is for the good people not to do anything. Who will do it if you don't? (by the way, this was also something the retreat touched on during praise and worship) Think about it! Seriously. Then follow up on it! Act on it!!!!!!!

WOW!!!

2006-10-03T06:22:00.000-07:00

WOW!!! i'm actually blogging... well, i for one have many things to say, at times. so... i'll just write whatever comes to my mind whenever whatever comes to mind. Make sense? I think so :P
(that was shorter than i expected...)