Seek and You Shall Find

After searching every single DVD shop I came across, I finally found what I was looking for in Punggol Plaza. Greenridge was the name of the store. Er... Never heard of it before either.

If you can't find something anywhere else, try Punggol.

Can finally send Ming Choi her surprise present! Once the order arrives that is... Gah.

Since the 6th of this Month...

I have not been to the city.

I have not run.

I have not seen a sunrise.

I have not read any books.

I have not been open with anyone.

I have not been alone long enough to really pray.

I have not been happy.

So it seems that man cannot live on hugs alone.

Community Project Fund-Raising

We earned many many moneys from generous church members who supported our community outreach in Macpherson. Here are 2 behind the scenes shots.

All items to be sold at the fun fare underwent stringent testing to ensure they were fun.

Math: Pass.

Marketing: Fail.

I am tired

Physically, I have enough sleep.

Emotionally, I have enough friends and family and love.

But I have not had any time alone this holidays.

More specifically, I have not had any time to just talk to God.

And so I'm not entirely myself lately.

Go away

leave me alone

with God.

Gifts

I got to hug and say "I love you" to quite a few people today. Yay.

Was so happy with the gift from Becky, who gave me 3 gifts actually. I could not believe it when I opened it at home. There was only one thing I really wanted this christmas, and she gave it, to the exact colour. I wanted to hug her, but she was not in my house. I wanted to sms her, but she was out of the country.

One card had a nice quote. I must say this is my quote of the year.

Perhaps the sheer joy in the sound of your laughter is enough to make 1 000 000 emo kids smile (:

Oh Andrea, thank you.

Kota Tinggi

Returning from a trip to Malaysia. The fun filled few days can be summed up in 4 lines.

One crab can eat so many people?

-Desiree Boey

What you eat when young... Shapes you.

-Kimberly Tan

You are funny in a weird way.

-Samuel Soon

And last but not least, the one line to rule them all, the one line that could start a thousand essays, debates and wars...

Law is law.

-Chris Chua

(I do wonder if any of this is funny to people who did not go for the trip.)

Dreaming Drowning Screaming

The night after camp I dreamt I was in a swimming pool.

I was the only one at the deep end who realised someone was drowning.

I dived down to save him, but as hard as I tried, I did not have the strength to pull him up and the more I tried the more we sank.

I let him go and surfaced. I called for help. One guy and girl responded by running to the float attached to the rope and throwing it to me. I dived down again and put the float round the drowning guy and he was swung up to safety.

The night before camp I dreamt I was on the second floor of the school we were about to have camp at. There was a gap in the floor that I could jump over with some effort, but if I didn't make the distance I'd fall to the first.

Before I knew it, Rebecca jumped the gap. I was shocked as she rushed towards the gap and leapt but I remembered she had made the jump before so it should be okay. But to my horror she fell short of the other side and fell into the gap. And before I could react Annabel also made the leap and also fell short of the gap.

The absence of a scream were the only hope I had as I ran to the parapet to look down and check on the 2. Falling a single story would not be enough to seriously injure them, so the lack of a scream meant they were not injured or in pain. And indeed they were not, less for maybe a sprained ankle.

Camp

I'll keep this post simple. The past 4 amazing days were summed up in 3 expressions.

1. The final major activity in the camp was a game called da jie xiao xiang (Big Street Small Alley). When the KPC leaders asked the Toong Chai leaders why this simple game was given such priority they answered,

"Because Xi Dong really likes to play this game. He lives to play this game."

2. The expression on Li Sen's face when I unslung the bass guitar at the end of the song Welcome to the Black Parade and raised it up to smash it. He literally jumped out of his chair and shouted,

"No! NO! NOOOO!!!!!"

3. The look on Wan Jun's face when we were in the bus that got lost and Dominic cracked a lame joke ("Who do you call when you mi lu? Mi Lu Bing!").

She looked like she had lost all meaning in life just hearing that joke.

Ah yes, it was a gooood camp.

Silence Falls

There is so much that happened today that remains unsaid.

So many people misread me today, in so many different ways. I don't understand it, why were people asking if I was okay, or if I was crying, or what not when I was just absolutely neutral.

Then again, there were moments I was thinking stuff but people didn't notice any change.

Ah. Now this post sounds emo, unintentionally. Self fulfilling prophecy.

There is so much to post about. And I will not be blogging for a few days to come. But I'll just stop here and and exit without a bang.

Youth camp begins tomorrow morning. Time to get on my knees.

Happily Ever After

Ashley and Jeff's wedding.

I started to melt when I saw the bride enter the sanctuary. The dress was so plain, so white, and so, so nice.

I was a puddle on the floor when they exchanged vows and rings. I grabbed my sisters arms and knee in my attempt to curb my nua-ness.

Awww.

Okay enough about me. Ashley threw the bouquet to our church girls. As they clamored (dodged) for the right to get married next, one emerged the winner.

Unfortunately it was the 6 year old page boy Sean who caught it.

I know our church girls don't want to get married yet, but yeah... This is going to be a long and lonely next half of our lives waiting for Sean to grow up before anyone else gets married. Guys, time to change church.

His mom posted that night on FB:

Valerie Theng 's Sean caught the wedding bouquet and is mighty upset he can't make good on it for another 20 years. He thinks it is very unfair that KoKo Justin can get married and he can't

Yesterday at 18:08 · Comment ·

Heh, thanks to you dude none of us can get married and we'll all have to suffer with you.

But wait, there still is hope for the rest of us! The youth camp I'm about to attend this wednesday has girls from the other church we're working with coming!

Time to get my eyebrows done.

7 Days to 7 Years

My uncle's name is Lawrence.

In 7 days time, he would have spent 7 years without walking.

19 December 1996

My uncle accepted Jesus as his saviour. He gave the many Chinese idols he had at home to the temple. After which, he had nightmares that were demonic and oppressive in nature for a while.

19 December 2002

He had flown to Kazakhstan to be a missionary. He slipped on ice and hit his back. He had to be air-lifted home and needed surgery. He lost the mobility of most of his body.

19 December 2009

In 7 days time uncle Lawrence will have been bed-ridden for 7 years. After numerous treatments and therapy, he can only move his hands and legs slightly.

Yet in 7 days time, he would be giving his testimony in church. After all that he had been through, he could still smile and sing of God's faithfulness.

He prayed for Marianne and I.

Dad got down on his knees, and washed uncle Lawrence's feet.

I could not hold back my tears.

Winds of Change

The wind these 2 days have been so refreshing. We've had storms, we've had sun, but it's been a while since we had cool breeze like now.

When it hits me, I stop, stand, close my eyes, and smile.

It was quite cool when my family walked out of the lift today and all of us enjoyed the wind for a moment. Dad wanted to sleep at the corridor where the breeze was so nice. Mom fell over laughing when I imagined the neighbours finding him outside the door. "Some fight you must have had to have to sleep outside eh?"

I like my family. Yeah.

But well... yeah.

This is going to be the last month we stay all together in a long time. If I get into hostel I'm gone till May. And then I want to head for India for a month. By then, Marianne would have flown off to South Africa for her own take at missions, just as I had done at her age. So we all go our separate ways.

Come to think of it... It's like army again- staying away from home, seeing them just 2 days a week. It's been 10 months since army ended. Hmmm... when I look at the future there's a little sadness at the parting. But I'm glad for these 10 months. I've probably never been so close to my sister before.

I love her.

I guess I'll never realize what I have till I remember what I didn't.

PS: It's 1am. As I'm typing this she's playing some emo music on the piano. The song goes- "When God made you, he must have been thinking about me."

Davis

A person's identity is always a work in progress.

Divine Irony

So Carl Sagan was an atheist. Haha.

God FTW.

(If you're blur refer to one of my previous post here.)

GMH is the new FML

There's this website that is the complete opposite of FML. I will warn you though, once you click on the link, you'll probably spend a lot of time at this site.

www.givesmehope.com

MingChoi, thanks for this link you placed on your blog. Your link GMH and I hope it will give others hope too. And though I haven't contacted you in half a year, I'm going to do something special for you this Christmas.

Quote of the Week

Granted these people are egotists, or atheists, or agnostics, or emancipated, or whatnot, still I can't understand why he does this or she does that.

-Clement Scott, 1891

(Don't worry, I don't know what half the words mean either, but I kinda get the idea.)

If a face could launch a thousand ships...

Can you get millions of channel views and almost a hundred thousand subscribers on youtube by doing nothing? Well, this girl could.

How many people do you think watched this video?

If you guessed 4,493,844, you are absolutely correct! At least that was the figure when I watched it.

What about this one?

Just so you know, she got 5,281,933 views for this.

MRirian has 81 videos, all just like these 2, and each grossing 6 digit number of views.

Seriously, all the film making skills in the world can never triumph over the pretty face of a mysterious girl.

Marathon Entry

"Okay guys, ready? Go! Only 42,000 steps to the finishing line!"

And then some.

I don't want to bore you with this Marathon of a post. So I won't tell you about finding Guan Zhong at the starting line, about dad peeing in the city, about running next to a woman who looks so much like Yinhong, about bringing only enough power gel to last half the race and realizing that they did not give more than one packet at the mid point, about getting overtaken by the church uncle twice my age, about looking for Clarisse at every turning point in vain, about finding Suan Tze instead, about the knot in my pants that poked into my skin affecting my urinary tract and thus I cannot have babies any more, and about falling and finishing far far behind dad.

So don't worry. I won't tell you about those things. Not a word.

What I will tell you is...

I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran...

I ran when people ran, I ran when people walked.

I ran when I was smiling, I ran when I was in pain.

...and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran...

I stopped running at water stations, coz I'm clumsy.

Then I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran...

I ran when my legs were cramming, I ran when my knees hurt bad.

I ran when others were cramming, I ran when others stopped.

...and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran...

Then a casket passed, playing Namoamitafa.

And I started walking.

That was some serious warning.

(My original funny blogpost idea would have ended here. But some emo stuff happened towards the end of the race. So continuing...)

And then I ran some more.

28km. This was as far as I had trained, and the raw pain began to seep in. In my trainings I had increased the distance by 4km each week, and the additional 4km was always unbearable. I had trained up till almost 28km before this, so the marathon thus far was survivable. But now the body began to fail, and to make matters worst, I had just finished my very last power gel. I had carried 3, and had expected to replenish my supply at the halfway point, but they only allowed us to take one. That was bad news.

So physically I was pushing the limits now, having passed my comfortable distance and exhausting my electrolyte supply, but that was not the only thing I had to contend with.

Mentally I was struggling with the distance left. 14km is a long distance, even more so after your body has been worn out by 28. We were on the long straight stretch of east coast with no sign of ending and I was running alone. I was running, but everyone seemed to be overtaking me, even the ones I did not expect. I joined this marathon to say I've done something few others could. But 15,000 people ran with me today. And so I wondered, what in the world was I running for?

The answer didn't come for another 10 kilometers, during which some kind soul standing by the road gave me a power gel pack and I downed a banana to keep me going. When uncle Yak Jin overtook me, I realised I was running so slowly that a man twice my age could catch up. Yes I was fearful of the big 30km mark that everyone warned against, when the body starts to cram up and many people begin to walk, but the fear of it was stopping me from even pushing at all. I was already at the 30, and my body was not acting up the way the others were. So what was I waiting for? I began to pick up slightly.

Now I tried to pace people, and there was this girl who's name on her tag was Stephanie who was always overtaking me, which means we were averaging the same speed. I tried to follow her pace but I could not keep up. Sigh.

All this while, I was still running, but I had not found a reason to push it. "Just go with the motion, do the right thing," I thought. And so I ran and I ran and I ran. Painfully, and meaninglessly.

After an aimless 38 freaking kilometers, I had set myself to run the final 4km well, but still didn't have a good reason to. I found my purpose when I was overtaken by a girl at the water point. From the back I saw she was wearing a black bandanna on her head, with her right hand holding one end of a towel (the other end was held by a guy), and the back of her shirt said, "Close your eyes, Dream big, Race for it!" And then I noticed that the bandanna was covering her eyes. She was running blindfolded, and he was guiding her.

I kept up with the 2 and saw her name was Karen. So I cheered her on and kept pace with them. They were indeed running for a cause- to raise funds for the Kiwanis Down Syndrome Foundation in Malaysia. And well, I found my purpose through helping someone else (who was helping someone else).

I ran ahead of them, I cleared the way for them, I took drinks for them. He lead her on the right, I cleared the way on her left. And we powered through the crowd.

The final 4 km was where more than half of the people were walking, as cramps and pain tore through their muscles. But we ran on, faster than I had run this whole race. The route marker signs came up to meet us so quickly. 39km... 40km.. 41km... No one was overtaking us. We ploughed through.

42km marker. Home stretch. Waved to Jon Ma faithfully waiting with the camera.

See... I'm telling the truth okay. And so the 3 of us came in together. Happily ever after. The end.

Post race...

Up to this point neither Karen or the dude guiding her knew my name (yes, yes, I didn't know his either). I was just a voice in the dark she was following. As she reached for her blindfold I felt a hint of anticipation. This would be the first time we'd see each other's faces, though we'd heard each other's voices for the past very interesting 4km. Then she lifted the bandanna and light flooded her eyes, temporarily blinding her.

I'll stop here for now. Just in case she reads my blog and freaks out. (Seriously now, in this day and age, getting hold of a person's name is getting hold of a whole lot of information on the internet. So I'm careful.) I'll let you know as the story unfolds. Yeah right.

I came across Stephanie later on. She was the small girl I could not catch up with so I called her by name and said she ran well. She was perplexed at not recognizing someone who knew her name, so I explained how she left me eating her dust.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"I'm 21," I replied.

"I'm only 18," and she sniggered, "train harder."

Thanks dear. Hahaha.

PS: I can't believe it. I crossed the finish in 5 hours 33 minutes. If I were to minus the first few minutes of waiting to get to the start line, the previous post would be spot on! FTW!

42km in 5hours 30minutes

That's the time to finish, hopefully.

That's the time to starting, definitely.

To Guan Zhong, Edwin, Owen, Clarisse, Zhi Kai, Dad and all the other suicidal people running with me, all the best.

To the rest going to church, don't drive. I'm running on the road.

To all those who survive if I don't- I love you. I really do.

I'm a little scared, but I'll live like I am dying.

Because I am.

Twitter Application Fail

To the right are the Tweets of username: undefined , not mine.

Big Scientific Concept Explained in Simple English

This dude is awesome. No one has ever come close to explaining to me what the 4th dimension is the way he did.

So building on what Carl said about the shadow of a 3 dimensional object being 2 dimensional (or flat), a shadow of a 4th dimensional object would basically be a 3 dimensional object that does not behave like one.

I wonder if you feel the way I feel watching this. I wonder what Carl Sagan's religious background is. If he's Christian, it makes sense. If he's atheist, this video is Divine Irony.

I should rename this entry Big Religious Concept Explained in Simple Science.

"Alone but lonely"

Realising that I've been hanging around girls all my life and needed some good male company, I worked on my friendship with Kenneth.

Kim said "Wah you 2 very gum now ah?"

I noticed a hint of jealousy in her voice. But of who?

I told Kenneth that Kim noticed we were closer.

"I wish you were a girl," he replied.

Quote of the week. Month. Year.

And in the words of others,

I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad.

-Gary Jules, Mad World

Am I just some chick you placed beside you

to take somebody's place?

-Avril Lavinge, Losing Grip