it's 11.25pm and i have to remove my contacts. *dry eyes~~~

i was thinking what if someone googled my blog name. it's actually v easy to find, sadly, for anyone who has my email >:(

chuh. it's your honour to read my blog everyone :D

watched johnny english today, there were some super-funny-die-laughing scenes like when he adjusted his seat up and down in a meeting and he couldnt control it HAHAHA the whole cinema was just short of banging their seats

but he was really annoyingly stupid too, a lot of times. oh well. bet you thought i was gonna come to some cheem conclusion about the human condition, but nooo hehehe i like watching movies that dont make me think so much :))

my dad just announced that he bought us a whitening colgate toothpaste. O.o Prepare to see white(r) teeth in 14 days world!!!

i was really refreshed by pastor chu's message. he came over the weekend from taiwan to share with our church. we desperately need to pray in tongues more, and pray more in general. some people cant accept it. but then again, many cant accept the gospel as well. God uses the foolishest things to shame the wise. i think if everything God does is understandable by human wisdom alone he might as well make us all gods. to those who criticise the move of the Spirit, let's just wait and see what fruits result.

God give us both new wine and new wineskins!

Wowww so many things to blog about. hehe oops sorry!

I must first record a huge event in my life. James and I are finally officially attached. yes i know about time. well 19 June was the date he picked. (just in case i dont record this anywhere else, i've been kinda slack diarying lately.) and June's like the month smack in the middle of our birthday months! hehe i think that's cool James, even though you'll prob never read this :)

i feel like uploading photos today (!!) that's smth big okay normally im too lazy. but here's what he got me that night.



i love balloons!!! :) and this is a happy me at home. 

guess what i was doing. i was blog-stalking myself o.O isnt that cool?

anyway wow im blogging. about time anyway. i was blog-stalking other ppl to get inspiration and motivation to blog, but everyone's posts were either boring or outdated, but i got inspired by myself, after blog-stalking myself. i just knew i was kinda cool. :))))

so much has been happening in my life i cant write it all down! but mainly it's been working as a teacher (hur hur) which convinced me NOT to be a teacher cos once you get old and stuff the kids'll hate you, they only love you cos you're young and energetic. but there are some good old teachers out there, i must admit, although that's rare.

other thing is i dont really like it that as a teacher my precious good brains would be going to waste. hehe. i mean you teach the same thing over and over again! and you do heckkk lot of admin work. checking files is the worst mans. i literally feel like puking everytime i have to go through a whole stack of 40 files. hehe.

but it's been a good experience. at the end of it i came out a more confident and sociable (i hope) person. and it was definitely meaningful :) managed to brighten up some lives, if you will. 

so im gonna be a lawyer. hopefully, if i do well enough in law school. i didnt get into nus :(((( -sad face- but i guess that means God has plans for me in smu then. i like the way wei ren put it: "our God makes no mistakes." it made me smile, amidst a very discouraging period. for a long long time i kept thinking, God what did you give me 6As for if all i did with it was to get too nervous and flunk my interview?

but i've learnt to move on from there and to be grateful for what i have. even if we're not faithful i thank God that He is, and will always be. 

we need prayer for the camp. >< we need budget. we need a venue. we need speaker. we need manpower. we need time. we need wisdom. we need You God.

this is Your camp. thank You for being our Provider. 

and the song for today is, without doubt, and after listening to so many runs of the recording just now:

When everything I see,
When everything I do
When everything around is failing me Lord
I lift my eyes and see
I know You're there oh Lord
And I know that You love me Lord

And even if I couldnt see
How wonderful Your plan already is
And even if i couldnt feel
That You were right by beside me

I'll still trust in You, my Lord
I'll still worship You, my Lord
Cos You're the same today and tomorrow
Forever the same, so I will trust You more
I'll still trust in You, my Lord
Cos You're the same, forever Lord


Thank you zhangpei for writing the wonderful song :)
 

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