Sunday, March 14, 2010

March - the best time in the year

4 march - my birthday! my friends held a surprise party for me. it was organised by er jie and it was pretty fun! that day, a thursday was quite a bad day, especially the first 2/3 of the day. early in the morning, i was booked by councilors cos i was late. received a severe warning never to be late again cos it would be bad if i really got into council - punishment would be double the usual. during contact time, my class sang me a birthday song. after that, the day went on with lessons. i hated the chinese lesson most, i had to do some summary thing on some uninteresting issue. i took eons to finish it. i left school only at 5. i remember wallowing in self-pity at the bus stop while waiting for 53, it was raining and the atmosphere wasn't birthdayish. furthermore, the prospects of a boring birthday (my family had no plans on that day itself, instead we were going on the following following sunday for the customary birthday dinner)

reached home at 6. mom was cleaning the house up and i asked if there were any people coming (i didn't at all suspect a party cos i made my mom pledge in sep 2009 never to accede to a request for a surprise bday party for me.) in the kitchen, i saw that mom had cooked a basket full of cray fishes and i was gleefully thinking to myself that i would have the privilege of eating so many of them. used the com, thanked the ppl who wished me on fb and went to shower.

when i came out, i saw er jie holding on the the balloon and i was, "crap! shoulda seen this coming! :(" i was reluctant to go out at first, i was wondering whether it was church friends or my clique, i noe it's obviously church friends cos surprise bday parties are their trademark, but i couldn't think very clearly then. when i walked out, i saw the people hiding under the cushions and all, they were my dear church friends. the people who came: cheryl, nat, huiqi, elisa, huishi, aaron, josiah, ivan, boaz, ezra, daniel and jonah. the rest of the night was as follows:

- they presented me my presents. very very nice ones. the balloon, the shirt and the slippers. the slippers are so nice and new that i dun dare to wear them out. the balloon unfortunately was a casualty after being hit by the ceiling fan. nevertheless, the presents are still very dear to me!

- i made it a point to thank everyone and take a personal pic with them

- i viewed the ppt presentation dedicated to me from ck as er jie played wonderful tonight on the piano. haha, it mentioned a few character traits of mine that start with c. eg cheeky, clever... i can't remember all, but thanks a lot ck! :)

- we played 2 rounds of 'don't forget the lyrics'

- dinner by mom, super good dinner. she rocks man, being able to cater such great food on my birthday.

- cut birthday cake. i had to make a speech out the cuff, started crapping a great deal, hope the audience weren't bored to death. the cake was choc + macadamia nuts + rum. also done by my capable mom. she rawks!

- played guitar for phantom of the opera while ezra and huishi sang. super fun project!

- videoed the 'performance', went on to do do re mi with cheryl and nat. videoed that down too

- with that, my party ended. THANKS ALL WHO CAME, YALL MADE MY BIRTHDAY EXTRAORDINARY

lastly, i must thank my dad immensely. he has bought me so many stuff since feb. he bought me all my school stuff - books, attire etc. when we went to queensway, he bought me a sunlight responsive FRISBEE (it turns purple in the sun), an ACOUSTIC GUITAR, and my black nike school shoes. and just yesterday, he purchased a macbook for me. and today, he sponsored my dinner at boshi sushi. great dad in this aspect!! muacks! i will miss my birthday this year for so many reasons.

oh yes, i did my theory exam yesterday too, before the it show. it was good la, except that i defined 'sehr' wrongly, duh. :( i put 'a little' instead of 'very'. so dumb of me, actually i had some inkling of 'very' over 'a little', but didn't dare to change. :(

Monday, January 25, 2010

CKS on 23 Jan

past sat was pretty fun! i joined cks the second time this year for prayer session. anyway, before that, i had a smashing time of tennis! to be frank, i enjoyed tennis more than cks. lol, im just a tennis maniac now. i wanna play lots of it! i love it when the ball goes POK! POK! POK! and so on, i love rallies too! back to sat, i went to aaron's at 12 with nat. i visited the gym, trained my inferior left arm with 2.5 kg weights before aaron came down.

we played 2h worth of tennis! aaron's good for a beginner and besides, he had to make a shift from badminton, which he plays more often, so i had a good time. then josiah came. the real FUN started cos he was from tennis in jc and he was more experienced, so we had a match. we were unable to finish even a set, there wasn't sufficient time. haha, but im glad to say that i was leading 6-5. we were supposed to have tie breaker, but couldn't. we were about to go when nat and ezra came from gym. they wanted to play so we relented a little. i partnered ezra on the less sunny side. i rmb telling him to skip from side to side instead of using his badminton footing. positioning is very vital in tennis. actually it is super important in every sport, but it is essential in tennis la. it was approaching 3, so we made our way up.

during cks, jonah introduced the mobile youth prayer group. this was a project that aims to make cks a vehicle of encouragement and blessing to members of the church. we were supposed to visit pastor lau that day to pray with him as well as fellowship with him, but he was in hospital.

for exhortation, josiah shared on psalms 23 and gave us an in depth analysis of the chapter. he said that we are liken to dumb sheep that only deserve God's wrath and are prone to attack from wolves. thus we need a shepherd, our Lord Jesus Christ who will be our mediator with God as well as the faithful protector against the devil. he also pointed out that the blessings that God grants unto us are more than sufficient (cup runneth over) and we shall never be in want.

after exhortation, we went a round sharing what our prayer items were. i shared that i hope that the youths can organise trips to penang to visit them over the weekend especially during our holidays, attend their service and by doing so, we can encourage them. i think many youths are keen to go up, it is just that we do not have the transport as well as finanacial backing. i am dreaming of a time when some youths will accompany pastor when he makes his monthly 'pilgrimage' north. maybe it will be too much to go every month, maybe at least twice a year would be good.

oh, i forgot to mention that tian long came! im pretty excited about a new member, cos i think ce is quite stagnant in terms of membership. i think the fe people were the last 'new' members in the congregation. im not saying that i hope we have new ppl every week so that our church will grow abundantly in size and manpower, besides, the true church of God is but a remnant. but it is indeed encouraging to see new faces. oh, i might be counting my golden eggs before they are hatched, cos tian long's not even a member yet, but he seems to be really interested in the reform faith and appears to enjoy our company loads. hmm, i think i will stay hopeful. :)

after the sharing, we had prayer by ezra, nicole then jonah. then we chatted and snacked before going down to play street soccer. my team consisted of aaron, cheryl and tian long. the opposing were er jie, josiah, erza and jonah. my team lost 15-12. i scored 3 goals out of my team's 12. not bad for a girl lah. aaron scored the majority of the remaining. oh, this was how i scrapped my knee. (reminiscence of westlife's seasons in the sun - skinned our hearts and skinned our knees) haha. it happened at the very beginning of the match, when i received the ball for the very first time, i dribbled the ball and stepped over an insignificant pile of leaves, however, it was big enough to reduce friction and i fell heavily onto the cement ground. the skin on my left knee was gashed, it was quite deep, i could see something white, probably a much deeper level of skin, or maybe it was my muscle, i dunno! someone (i forgot who) poured water over the wound and er jie provided tissue to dap the area to rid of the dirt particles. despite my wound, i played on. diluted blood and viscous plasma later trickled down my shin, but it was very little. i cleaned it up when i got to the house.

following the sweaty game of soccer, all of them went for swimming except for cheryl, tian long and i. we went up to the house, cheryl went to shower, tian long and i helped to cut fruits. tian long was pretty chatty, he was sharing about his special style in cutting watermelon and kiwi. then after a while, he conceded that i was doing a better job. lol, when we were supposed to shave the kiwi skin, he got lazy and started cutting off the edges of the kiwi, leaving behind a apalling cuboid with the black seeds on all sides. he didn't stay for dinner, before he left, he told me, 'dun tell the rest about the... HAHAHA...'

when dinner was done, i wanted to play tennis again. but it was too late. instead, josiah and i had a very spiritually refreshing talk on worldly music, charismatic worship, false teaching by some pastors in present times and the doctrine of healing. this all points to us that the true church of God has to be guarded well, if not we will succumb to other things contrary to truth.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Saturday of service, studying the bible and with Samuel!

while im blogging here, my dear cousin samuel is sparring with his dad in a game of chess. lol, this cousin of mine is so smart. he wrote (all by himself) an amazing, awesomest essay on his experience as a child ambassador for APEC2009. his english is so good, he used the word 'buggies', i have no clue what that is but i guess it is a car, or some sort of transportation. and he's only apporaching 9! i absolutely love my smart cousin! :) he loves to prance and caper around, loves to tinkle the ivories and he even performed a chinese dance for us! (catch it below) i think he definitely has the makings of a wonderful person!





only pic of the night together. :)


teaching er jie how to play chess. cheemology! but i read the instructions, cool game, but i will take time to remember the roles of each character. :S


fooling around. he's in equilibrium! i think he's pretending to be a diving board, or maybe a dolphin gliding in the ocean.


he loves my sofa.


a future doc? given his intellect, most probably! depends on whether he wants to be one though! he's fiddling with er jie's sethoscope btw, using it on auntie hannah.


the video i promised. ignore my mum's convo...

before samuel, auntie hannah and uncle stephen came, i was at dinner with ck. we ate at some economy rice stall cum steamboat cum tze char stall. i ate seafood tze char and drank lime juice, they were not bad. then to get home, er jie and i took 62 bus service.

oh! talking about service, i shall explain the title of my post. today, at 11, mum and i travelled to 11 jalan mesin, it's the new church location! when we reached, josiah gave us a tour, whoot, the place is pretty neat! i think it will serve us well in the years to come. after that, we got down to work. mum mainly wiped the chairs while i ripped the plastics off the chairs. i found the experience akin to a kung fu practice. lol, especially when it came to shredding the plastics of the legs of the chair, i felt that i had a special kind of 'skill' that did the job very effectively. besides, i was imagining that the chair was some chicken that had to be removed of its feathers and eventually skinned. haha, that's quite interesting, but dumb too! at least it made me smile a little as i 'skinned' the chairs. lol. by 30mins, i was dripping with sweat! (fortunately, not blood) ewk!

after about 3 hours of hard work, we had lunch and some of the youths chatted around the conference table. we proceeded to play some circle games which weren't as fun as i had thought they would be. by 330, ck started.

during bs, i was enlightened very much on how to refute the armenians on what they claim about 'all' and 'world' in their pet verses. i realise how unfortunate they are, misquoting the bible and bringing unto themselves grave judgement. they fail to see the context around the verse or see the passage in light of scripture and foolishly jump into conclusions. i also learnt the differences between the different denials of limited atonement and how they are wrong. im proud to say that after 2 sessions of bs, (n 1 more yet to come), im already very convinced about this truth and am comforted that ck is guided rightly in the sacred word.

after bs, majority of us had the golden opportunity to utilize an ancient cargo lift! it was a blast using the lift! i daresay many of us are pretty adventurous, we dared to step into an elevator that did not guarantee a safe trip. haha, i could say that i was mentally prepared for a shut down when we were inside the lift. thank God we managed to survive a few trips up and down unscathed. we visited the rooftop and witnessed some quite scenic views of town. some of us even suggested camping there, i second that! :)

that sums up my saturday, im glad i set aside time for God this day. besides, saturday is a day for u to set-ur-day. spending time with church friends is the best option for me! :) okay u probably think that im extrememly lame, but it cannot be helped! but church friends, u will most likely concur with me on my last comment :)

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

More holidays

im loving it! while others are going to school, im lazing at home. okay, not really, apart from using the com most of the time, i stilll have to practise piano and do lots of theory homework. i have been going out quite often too.
2 weds back, i watched avatar with er jie and michelle (er jie's med friend). i was feeling nauseous throughout the movie cause we were sitting in the front row and there was quite a fair bit of action, but i still enjoyed it loads cos its storyline is something fresh and the graphics are superb. yep, so u can imagine how good the movie was, cos u would enjoy it even though u feel sick.
last mon, i played badminton with cheryl, nat, daniel, given and tabi at sengkang sports complex. that place's really quite complex cos there are many facilities, including the pool that has slides. whoo, but i have yet to try that out. after badminton, nat, cheryl and i went for dinner at some hongkong cafe with cks. we had devotion after that and aaron shared us on rev 3. he was encouraging us about the physical and financial size of our church, though we may be small, but what is more important is that Christ commends our spiritual strength. go read it if u have the time, very very comforting. :)
on wed, i went swimming with bernice at her condo, swam for 1.5h. okay, i shall say the truth, we swam for half an hour, talked the rest. haha. following that, i went up to shower and met mom and er jie to visit the singapore flyer. it was a good experience and the night lights are good for pictures. :) after that, we went for dinner at mankansutra. SHIOK FOOD (and drinks), despite a little high on the cost. i still can't forget the taste of my calamansi juice! it's now my all-time favourite drink
on thurs, was super excited for pnp in the morning to afternoon, when evening approached, i was nonchalant about it. haha, typical me. during the rehearsal, i arranged the ppl. remembering how the seating arrangement was so problematic that it ate into my dinner eating time. fortunately, cheryl kindly stood by me. pastor goh preached his sermon, we had a break. elisa, me and isa took our-names-obsessed-pics. after that, it was the youth's turn to sing. the girls kind of screwed up o holy night. here am i, lord was passable to me. almighty father was good enough. the women sang hallowed memories and the men fellowship sang faithful men. my dad was being crappy and egoistic... >(
after pnp, many youths and their families went to henderson bridge to watch the fireworks. there, we captured the view of 2 spectacular shows. we also snapped away, photos are the best way to remember the fun we had.
then about 15 youths embarked toward josiah's house for a sleep over. we played games like charade, mafia and ate chips before we finally slept at 4. charade was great fun, im so proud of how i managed to act out annias and saphira. haha. my group gave the other group eglon, joseph and potipher's wife, we sure were pretty tricky!
the next day, i woke up at 9. we headed down where we had a devotion sharing by ezra in psalms. we sang songs too, i was as very usual, strumming the guitar. we had breakfast prepared by emily which consisted of curry and bread, watermelons etc, can't remember all of them. then we sang secular songs like phantom of the opera tunes and sound of music and westlife! it was soooo fun. i was playing the piano though, i think im really not made out to sing, plus my throats not its best and i would feel giddy after singing high notes. :/
after singing and playing the piano, i played a few games of bridge then went to the park with josiah and others to play table tennis and badminton. josiah, jonah, ivan and i had a friendly table tennis doubles, which was super fun. the rest of the girls played badminton and card games. later, we merged to play mafia. towards the end of the afternoon, i played more table tennis with jonah, ivan and huishi. i even taught huishi some table tennis and im glad she enjoys it too. :)

it started to drizzle, so me and huishi walked back. the rest were already back there helping out to prepare the place for the dinner. huishi wanted to learn guitar so i taught her. actually she knew how to play alr, but never practise. while i was playing josiah's acoustic guitar, the first string uncannily broke! i was so alarmed, but i was also calm. i informed josiah about it and he kindly overlooked the matter. then when i played joshua's acoustic guitar, the same thing occured, this time third string. fortunately, there was hope to salvage the string. i did the same, to admit to joshua later on, and likewise he brushed the matter off, saying that it was fine. i can't apologise enough and i really thank them for being so kind-hearted. what i learnt from this incident is that the acoustic guitar strings are way more fragile than the classical guitar strings (which is soo ironic cos acoustic guitar strings are metallic while the latter's nylon), so i have to extra careful with the acoustic guitar next time i play it. but i wonder why i never broke any strings, including acoustic, ever since i ever played guitar, which makes this incident so peculiar.

then, we had an unexpected visitor, uncle soon kia! when he arrived in paul's car, it was pouring, so i instinctively ran out with an umbrella to receive him. i tried to make him comfortable, serve him warm milo and sing+strum to old christian tunes with paul singing along. i even got to chat with him a little. he was lamenting how his aged mother had passed on without receiving Christ. i tried empathising with him a little and comforting him. im glad that the singing took this depressing matter of his mind effectively. actually, through this experience, i am convienced that i have a soft spot for old people whom i can communicate with. i was so willing to talk with uncle soon kia as though he was my relative. this reminds me of my love for mama, although we have a communication barrier, she speaks teochew and a smattering of chinese, my conversing chinese is much worse than my written chinese (which is super horrible too...)

the dinner was preceded by pastor lau's sharing. i remember being extremely exhausted, so i wasn't really listening. argh, i seem to have forgotten the whole message. D: im utterly disappointd in myself.

dinner was good although nat, elisa and i had meagre leftovers as we attended to joanne who was having lower abdomen pains. after dinner, the real fun rolled in. the youths played a few rounds of mafia then we play the retarded games like huang shang, bing bong. they are super dumb games, but that night, it was pretty refreshing for all the tired youths, and we had a great time of laughter.

the next day on sat, i played tennis with noelene, aaron and boaz at aaron's condo. it was very fun, only that it was horribly torrid. after that, we went up to help cheryl plan games for the ck outing in that afternoon. in the afternoon, we made our way to marina bay, i recall having a good talk with aaron about stuff like paino examinations and ck bs sessions. it was pretty interesting.

at marina bay, i was super tired. i hadn't sleeping enough for the past few nights plus i had drained my energy (albeit being fully aware of it) on a demanding sports like tennis. :) we had exhortation on the responses of ruth and orpah by marcus wee. i think he did a good job draw comparisons between the two women, how one is so zealous to stay faithful to God while the other is easily persuaded to forsake God.

after that, we had a game, the catching game. then followed by bing bong, which wasn't fun anymore with this bigger group of people. after that, some guys flew kites, while i played apples to apples with a few others. then most of us played captains ball. i was still very tired so i sat out of the game till they were going to end. towards the end, marcus' kite got cut, he must have been sad...

next, we went for dinner at lau pa sat. nat and i treated ourselves to a good meal. i hunted for calamansi juice, but it was nowhere to be sold. so i settled with lime juice. i had bbq chicken wings with lime and fishball beehoon with black vinegar. dinner was the end of the day.

on sun, we had open sunday. ce's open sunday is a very much quieter affair compared to fe's, but im satisfied with the former's anyway. im glad my group did good enough. :)

yesterday, i went out with nat to watch movie, then play badminton, then dinner and finally with an awesome time of tennis! :D i lub tennis now. but table tennis is still my utmost favourite followed by tennis, close behind. i think i have given up on badminton, i dun like it anymore. im more interested in cool ball spins than lame shuttle cock exchanges.

today morning, i crashed er jie's med lectures. lol, it was pretty fun, but i must commend myself for being brave enough to go with her all the way to nus just to experience uni life. i learnt about rosuvastatin, atrovastatin, simvastatin, lovastatin. do you even have a clue what they are? lol, they are to drugs to treat high cholesterol. i learnt terms like tombosis, stenosis, myocardial infarction. verdict: medicine school is COOL! but i will not end up there cos im afraid of large amounts of blood, so being a doc is out of the question! :)

yay, that sums up my holidays so far. im receiving o results on this mon at about 2. please dun ask me for my results! i will just say thank God. will u get a hint? NOPE! cos i will thank God regardless of my results. ;)