this is amazing! i cant get onto facebook cos it's not allowed by the government! hahahahaha cooooool. :) ok bye!

HIIIII im in vietnam!!! :D finally. the plane ride was alright, except for 5 min where i felt kinda claustrophobic. dunno why.

well we reached the airport at 630pm local time (one hour behind sg's) and it had this weird (and not so nice) smell. dint smell like anything i've smelt before. but my bro and i termed it the vietnam smell. hopefully we dont come back smelling like it. hehe.

this hotel guy picked us up in his car and drove us 35km away to our Golden Sun Hotel (so cute right their name). the ride was very entertaining, what with him flashing at vehicles blocking his path with his headlights or whatever lights they were, and avoiding traffic and talking on the phone at the same time lol.

anyway i was quite thrilled when i found out they had a VAIO COMPUTER in the hotel room !!!!! and free internet AND cable tv with my favourite cartoon network hahahahahaha yayyy. the room's more than decent (much better than i expected anyway) with like heater and a super clean super neat toilet (which is of ULTIMATE importance - to all my aspiring hotel manager friends). it's a pity i dint bring my USB adapter to upload photos though cos HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW that they had a freaking comp here, plus internet. haha nvm im super grateful already. thank God!!! =)

but too bad im leaving tmrw to go further north to this place called Sa Pa for some village and mountain trekking tour, where it's SEVEN degrees celcius my goodness. we're really quite unprepared, cos my dad checked online and it said the coldest was 15 deg. apparently not very reliable. hehe. it's already 16 here in hanoi city center. so we're just gonna hafta buy more warm clothes tmr. hope i dont freeze to death.

ok that's all for these few hours it's 1015pm now, james is gonna call from US at 11 yay! goodnight my precious friends i miss yall and i know you miss me too!! keep me in prayer if you're free, cos it's not that safe here i think. yup take care everyone, or whoever's reading haha. xoxo

wahh. my two faithful readers. i am so touched. i am touched beyond words. that means i will be speechless for, say, the next two months. and that's a modest estimate. yayyy :)

hahahaha. thanks ty! the Lord be with you too, even if you sometimes suan other people. tsk tsk. (oh i realised if you type 'thank you tai yong' in abbreviated form you get tyty! ahahahahahahahaha) and caleb, i hope you find something more, um how should i put this, actually interesting to get excited about other than plants. school's not that bad is it? xD

actually this was meant to be posted as a reply to caleb and ty's comments in the comments link, but THEN i thought of a super intelligent way to post another entry! so tadaaaa my comment becomes a post! =)

gosh aren't i brilliant?

i can finally breathe. after 4 straight weeks of non-stop mugging for prelims. but it feels kinda weird to sit around with nothing to do. i keep getting this urge to study. for the first time, i have to force myself to play. =X that must mean something's really wrong.

at this rate i think i'll only have like a few friends left after a's. haha. no time to hang out no time to have fun. i've grown so distant from so many of my friends. i miss them =( i miss going to gelare and laughing the night away, i miss going to peoples' places to watch movies or just cook dinner, i miss dancers i miss church friends i miss my cousins. a levels are really anti-socialising. but at least i have my lovely cell, i have cheryl to study with at airport so i wont be paiseh choping the table at killiney's for the whole day on my own, i have james to save me travelling time xD okay kidding im not so mean.

on a happier note, stewardship sunday was good :) we werent even confident of selling 50 cups of bubble tea; aunty cindy's expenditure meant we had to sell at least a hundred to make a profitl; in the end we sold AT LEAST 200!! wheeeeeeee~~~~ wow that's quite interesting. i've never used ~ before. anyway i think this year's was really really fun yay good job to the organising team and everyone else. there was the funfair atmosphere and everything was like super exciting. thank God the kids had fun too! i guess that's the most important part la. =)

im reading this book called 'disappointment with God' now.  it's by phillip yancey. great book for cynics. and generally good for anyone seeking a deeper relationship with God. led me to tears quite a few times, when i start remembering how the Lord endured heartbreak after heartbreak because of me, and He still loves me so unconditionally.

these are tough times for children's min. i pray and i hope that my brother in hospital will get back to his normal self again. and that the end year camp can go on. like a few of us were saying the other day, we can forget everything we ever did or learnt in sunday school, but we'll never forget the camps. at least this time it's got me to really treasure it. God please let it go through.

Learning to bless HIs name in both good and bad. I guess that's what im doing now, what with my CT results.

got A for one lit essay (: zhixin too and she got A overall! hahaha. finally a breakthrough for our class. i missed A by 2 marks, but im just really grateful for no more heart attacks. well the bad news is that i failed econs. n but passed math (see i told you, good and bad) and got a B for physics (i really need to mug). will get to know bout GP tmrw i guess.

when i got back econs i was quite... devastated. have never done so badly for that subject before. well at least i learnt something.
good results arent mine to glory in, neither are bad results for me to wallow in self-pity or disappointment.
both are in the hands of my God and King, who is quite reasonably the only person i can perfectly trust to hold them. and then there's the thing about trust again. but i shant go there now.
actually im - might i say - grateful that i did so badly this time round. i really needed a wake up call. to start mugging and praying.
and then this leads me to this idea which came up as i was blow-drying my hair (ok that was unnecessary info but nvm). it's this: we should always yearn to know God and HIs will more and more, but we should never presume that just because we understand Him and how He works in our lives or what He requires of us, that we can manipulate Him just like any other person or thing that we understand in our world. we cannot fashion His will to fit ours, nor shape our understanding of Him to fit what we think He should be or do. example: God i studied really hard and prayed really hard for this common test. why am i not getting the results? haha. if we could control God so easily, why then He wouldnt be God anymore, would He?

Blessed be Your name!

Blessed be Your name, through the road marked with suffering; though there's pain in the offering, blessed be Your name.
Every blessing You pour out, I'll turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say, 'Blessed be the Name of the Lord, blessed be Your name.'

i dont know why sometimes i get so stressed. and so insecure.

God i want to run back to You.

recently my parents adopted my uncle's fish aquarium and its associated inhabitants. they have since found much pleasure and satisfaction from taking care of the fishies.

BUT! a few days ago, they just had to GEI KIANG by buying and installing new landscaping for the aquarium like this ugly gaudy orange, purple and yellow coloured corals on a rock thing to replace the old but very natural big wooden barrel that looked really nice! and as if that wasnt enough, they changed HALF the water in the process, claiming the removal of the barrel caused a lot of dust to fly up in the water.

as a result of mankind's intervention, the world of the aquarium has seen widespread deaths and mortality, much to the whole family's dismay (except maybe my brother -.-).

mum: oh no ah mah liked the snake fish a lot.. im so sorry, so sorry fishies...
me: -was speechless for awhile- huhhh.......... ): see i told you dont change the water !!! -sad face X 100-
brother: hahaha you changed HALF the water?! HAHAHAHA
dad: aiya shouldnt have told you. i told mummy we should have just bought two more fishes and put them back.
the rest of us: HUH?! how could you!!

my family's becoming cuter and cuter by the day. i wish the holidays'd never end so i could just spend time with them and all my precious friends. doctors are recommending prolonging the june school hols anyway hehe. did i just jinx that? ><

it's so scary, watching the news about swine flu and all.. Singapore now has a grand total of FIFTY cases, where one week ago there were only 17? got so many things going around in my mind... like some washing machine in overload. on top of studying for cts, i have a 5000 word essay to hand in for lit H3, and having to rush everything in 2 weeks is not just no fun at all, it's quite impossible.

but i know my God will give me strength to do the things i need to do, to be faithful to Him and to honour Him. the world may crumble around me and fall, but He is my everlasting Rock and my peace and my joy; i will not be shaken!

i have found so much comfort in the Psalms. they're probably the most beautiful poems and songs i've ever read or sung.

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed,
a stronghold in times of trouble.
Those who know your name will trust in you,
for you, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you.

                    - Psalm 9:9-10

and the all-time favourite:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
he makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

-Psalm 23:1-4

has been blogsurfing!
hehe. now i should collect money from those ppl who have the honour of me stalking/visiting their blogs :D

whee!reason (or excuse) number 2 for not blogging so often herself:reading other ppl's blogs is so much more fun and interesting than updating my own.
especially older people's blogs. i realise that as ppl grow up they learn to laugh at themselves a lot more, and take things more easily.
or maybe as they grow up they tend to bury their emotions more because they need to feel on top of everything? now that's quite a depressing thought and i shant dwell on it.

that said, i must congratulate taiyong for the success of  his creation jeshystravels.blogspot.com, birthed from his boredom and nothing-better-to-do-ness of the holidays. although only a few days (weeks?) old, it has manage to seize international attention and has garnered praise from highly-esteemed critics as can be verified through the you-CANT-miss-it tagboard that almost slaps you in the face when you enter the site! satisfaction guaranteed. p.s. dont forget to do the polls/MCQs as well! proudly brought to you by andrea's classifieds.

okay *runs out of nonsense steam*

back to the dreadful, terrorizing (note to self: terroriZing looks scarier with a z than an s), bloodthirsty kingdom of MATH.

heeeelp...

i realised something. livejournal puts me off blogging quite a bit. NO that's not an excuse. it's true, but then i dont know why either. i just miss blogspot. okay okay im downright lazy.

today there is smth different from the usual whining! well i was emoing on my bed hugging my two biohazards (hehe only some privileged ppl know what they are) and philosophizing about life. this is what i came to:

-the 'completely' in 'completely honest' is actually redundant. if you're telling a little lie in the middle of a lot of truths that's not being honest at all already, is it.
-so this is what the world has come to, twisting and weaving around absolutes until there's practically nothing we can be definite or certain about anymore (heisenberg's uncertainty principle !), leaving behind only the paradox: "one thing we can be certain about is that we can never be certain about anything." there's nothing in black or white anymore, everything is just different shades of grey.
-but that's not true! what the bible teaches is a very clear line between right and wrong, between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, pure and contaminated. if you're pure, you're pure. even if just a LITTLE impurity exists then you're impure. there's no such thing as a DEGREE of purity. to illustrate it better, it's like something someone mentioned to me before: if you were told that a cup water had just 1 drop of poison in it would you drink?

some people might irk at such a dichotomy and say that extremes are baad. but as for me, im glad im (supposed to) have a clear set of values, not floating about in space somewhere. and i also celebrate the fact that my world isnt in just black and white or grayscale, but in full-blown multi-colour.

there are a lot of things i wanna type here if i were to really blog proper, the bulk of which would be much complaining and bitching and whining. not very nice things at all to type or to be read. it's just that these few days as syf gets nearer and dance pracs get more frequent (like everyday frequent even on sunday today) and more intensive, the stress starts to show in my outside life as well. i break and cry so easily, i get sad or mad without much provocation, i think too much into people's words and actions. in short (and i hate hate hate to admit it) i am becoming emo kid once again. yucks. i really dont wanna return to that.

sometimes finding things to give thanks for seems an impossible uphill task. but then again i find that i treasure my time with my Lord much more now that my free time has shrunk. when i rest in Him He will give me strength.

to taiyong and caleb and jon and whoever is so free to keep coming here: hiphip hooray! i blogged!

alright alright i'll do it.

this is gonna be a seriously straightfoward update. like newsletter. yayy. pay money for subscription everyone!

shucks i havent done this for so long i kinda forgot how to blog. xD let's see... what's occupying my school life right now is dance and math. duhhh. i realise i spend an average of one third of my week doing either dance or math. even when i was calculating that i was doing math. wow it never leaves me! yucksss. but recently im really glad be able to understand almost everything in all my lessons quite quickly, where last year i was practically drowning. i guess it's just getting used to it la.

but i refuse to be reduced to a no-lifer! (i probably just sacrificed my A's grades in that one sentence) hahaha. i mean, wont your life be damnnn sad if all you do is eat sleep shit mug dance? i'm learning, although very very slowly, to manage my time, and to plan it. gosh doesnt this sound like a cheat-your-money time management seminar. but seriously! it helps a lot when i plan ahead what i want to accomplish each week, then each day. for the very first time, my tutorials get completed on time,  i am (almost) not sleeping in class or lectures, and even have some spare time of my own! yayyy. success story #247. oh crap 3-digit numbers made me immediately start thinking of vectors.

another major thing that happened recently.. daniel left on 15th feb at 9pm for aussieland, amid heartbroken tears and sobs (no prizes for guessing whose). feels strange without him in CM now. just not the same. i just realised that i really miss him omgosh! :( daniel must come back soon okay!! well since his 21st bday was exactly one week later on the 22nd we filmed  this DAMN hilarious laugh-your-lungs-and-your-guts-sore video for him. jon tay was da bomb man. must upload onto youtube someday and give you all the link. xD then we prepared a box of stuff too! which we characteristically finished decorating and stuffing like 1 hour before his flight was supposed to leave. ahaha we fantasteek.

have i told you that i love birthdays. surprising someone and getting surprised myself are equally exciting. i love surprising ppl and knowing that they'll feel special. :) thank God for birthdays. what would we do without them?

(answer: i dont know, swim around in your mother's womb i guess.)

2008 has come and gone. time seems to go by exponentially faster with each year we grow older. at LG last friday we were asked to review the significant happenings of our year and find somethings to thank God about. for me, last year was one where (in more or less chronological order):

i looked forward to going to school (most of the time) because of my fantastic bunch of classmates;
i danced with guys for the first time;
i vice-chaired VBS with zhangs, and learnt a lot;
i realised what REAL dance training meant-nearing performance, 5-6 times a week, average of 4 hours each. dancing till 1030pm in school certainly was new for me;
i had a tough lesson on priorities (God, family, schoolwork, ministry, friends) and am still struggling to keep to it;
my uncle had a stroke at my grandfather's cremation and passed on a week later, traumatising my entire family;
i learnt to be a better and more obedient daughter to my parents;
for the first time in 9 years, I CUT MY HAIR SHORT;
i danced lyrical hiphop;
i did miraculously well for promos;
my travelling time was shortened as well because certain people got their driving licenses =P;
we had a combined camp with scripture union where we were so very enlightened by them;
i emcee-ed for a public concert in which the performers got standing ovations and God blessed my emceeing beyond my expectations;
i wore a gown for the first time (dont laugh) at the concert;
i flew for the 2nd time in my life, and was overseas for the longest time without my parents;
i went to a third-world country and realised the full extent of how much i have, compared to the cambodians, and consequently fell in love with the country and its people;
i experienced God's indescribable beauty at a waterfall;
i stayed over at a friend's place for the new year and slept at 5am.

my J1 year turned out to be so much more than i could ask for. i just hope that now the honeymoon period of my jc education is over i can get used to studying hard consistently this year, which is something i havent done since... primary school.

Lord you have been so good to me. help me to be good to other people too.

merry christmas everyone!! what a beautiful time of year. i dont want this year to end. but im really grateful that it's ending on such a great note. thank You Lord! (:

anyway, 12 of us went to cambodia from 13-20 dec for a mission trip: aunty cindy, james, daniel yim, cooper, gillian, janice, jaslyn, aaron, jon tay, clara, zhangwei and i. and yes there's really too much to write/blog about, so i'll just give yall the links to my photos on facebook! hehe. thanks a lot to my sweet mommy for getting the camera just in time. (: oh yeah, and you kind souls out there can help me tag ppl as well :D

Day 1,2,3

Day 4,5

Day 6 (I)

Day 6 (II), 7,8

the place is absolutely beautiful, and so are the people. we really really wanna go back there again next year. anyone wanna join us? :D
 

sweet sweet four days i had. met so many new friends from SU, and learnt a LOT from them. they're really caring, uncle david and the whole bunch. and really good in what they do. i'll miss them, especially those whom i made friends with-serene ng, benjamin, ivan, aunty amy. and of course dear shu xin, whom i got much closer to because we were in the same group. had a lot of fun with her, and michael too, with his interesting threats. xD jabez and him can go and do stand-up already. they're damnnn funny the both of them. kept cracking us and the kids up. ahahahha. i must say the younger teachers like kimberley and annette and abigail they all did a really good job even though they were quite new. sure am proud of them!

also enjoyed the time with oldies like daniel (mr camp commandant) and his vice-chair caleb, and taiyong, who suddenly started telling me bout his sucky army life which made me cry (!) cos i could really feel his pain. you're one brave brave guy.

amazing thing was that i dint feel tired at all during the camp when i was with the kids. only felt the need to sleep when each day ended. then when i got home, man, slept like a LOG. God's way of sustaining me throughout, and im really really grateful for that. also thank God for giving me such a guai group in Chilli! never seen anything like that. hahaha. and my dear dear james yak... !!! so hard not to cuddle him and touch his adorable cheeks. the entire group loved him too la. he's unbelievably cute. now i like him more than joel, cos he's older and guai-er. aaahhhh.

my other kids were a real blessing too. the new ones were:
the kids from cos:
oh ya must really applaud clara and aaron for coming up with this year's war game. it was so much FUN just getting splashed all over the place, and no one got hurt. good job :) damn funny part was when all the groups started allying with each other until we all got so confused it just became a free-for-all. xD

and finale night! man i cant believe we won !! hahaha. super funny la. shuxin and i skipped dinner that day to come with the dance, and we taught them like 20 min before the performance, but everyone loved it ! thank God again. we couldnt possibly have done it ourselves. hahaha. amazing stuff.

lots of kids got ministered to as well, and im really glad about that. the SU way of teaching is really Word-centered, and i like that too. i think both teachers and kids learnt a whole lot. :) God spoke to me about giving me rest, and i really enjoyed the entire ministry time. kudos to zhangpei and the other worship leaders, and uncle david. never had so much good clean fun in a camp before.

i dint take a lot of pictures cos i was too busy with everything else, and besides there were lotsa ppl with cameras anyway. well everyone rest well today! im missing camp already. ><

So many blessings i now see
It's impossible not to notice, not to give thanks to thee
Father out of the overflow
Of what You have given me
I cant not go
And tell of Your grace and mercy!

I am so very touched. obeying God brings such great joy. living one coherent God-centered life brings back that absolute, unshakeable contentment that i've been missing so sorely. i know my life isnt (and shouldnt be) problem free, but picking up my cross and bearing Christ's yoke beats bearing the suffocating burden of sin and the world ANYTIME.

i've been cooking lately!!!

-waits awhile for shock to register-

hahahahaha it's such fun. and so heartwarming to see all the pots and pans and rice cooker etc out again. and lots of utensils drying on the rack thingy. :D

i just hope i'll have time to keep this up. so far i've learnt veggie, soup, chicken, fried noodles, rice. i wanna learn how to steam fish and cook beef and pork! anyone wanna teach me? hahaha. YUMM. then maybe i'll go on to western, like do baked rice and stuff. excitingggg!

I had a lesson on parables yesterday, and it really opened my eyes to just how ingenious God is in using our language to speak to us. one instance that had a particularly profound effect on me was the part in 2 Peter 2 where Peter refers to proverbs 26:11- "A dog returns to its vomit," and "a sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud." My teacher/friend told me that she really did see her dog eat its own vomit after puking it out (can you imagine eating your own vomit?!), and that really really brought home to me the disgust God feels when we go back to sinning after we've been forgiven and washed clean by Him. As she continued talking i remember remaining stunned there for a while, completely struck by that realisation. It was so painfully piercing and clear to me. i went home and checked out the entire chapter, and here's a short passage from 2:20-21- "If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them." very very powerful words to christians who are still living in sin, who repent but continue doing the same detestable things again and again. it made me very afraid.

i dont want to be anymore like the person who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. that. is. so. incredibly. stupid.

to continue from that verse in James 1:  "but the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-he will be blessed in what he does."

Search me, oh God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns.

it's so funny the way i forget things at the exact moment i need to remember them. like now. -.-







nope, still blank. :(

shit man. this is worse than memory loss from old age (ok i dunno what the correct word is so i shant pretend). it was really profound. really insightful. made me wanna blog about it, despite my laziness. i shall mourn its loss.




UGHHHH SO IRRITATING !!!!!!!!!!

doing my insights and refliections homework for PW now, and reading a very interesting teacher's blog. im one of the last ones to read it among my friends, apparently, and i can see why. it's hilarious. ahahaha shhh.

while on the way home i was thinking about the rubrics for i & r, where our grades fall into the categories of AE (forgot what it stands for), ME (meeting expectations and EE (exceeding expectations). and i was just thinking about the descriptors of the i & r essays that would fall into each band -for example thorough  elaboration in an essay would earn an ME, and so on- when it struck me. if the assessors could actually so-called 'predict' and classify aspects of an essay that would earn an EE grade, then the essay wouldnt be 'exceeding expectations' anymore, would it?

go figure. (:

oh yeah, i just have to blog about the stephenie meyer series. im ashamed to say this, but im HOOKED. at least twilight proved to be very very compelling and interesting. ahaha. hey come on i've got to have my share of vampire chick lit too right? haha alright to be fair, it's only semi-trash, turned out better than i expected. the storyline's good, although there are irritating repetitions of certain phrases and vocab here and there, and a few cliched, cringe-inducing lines littered around, but it's on the overall a very enjoyable read, especially for giddy young teenagers like me. hehe. i cant wait for shi hui to lend me new moon!

ok gotta go back to stinking i & r and try to exceed expectations. goodbye!