The two sides of the coin :D

STUPID HARD DISK!!!! Unfortunately, I seem to be having hard disk probelms. My PC now hangs every other hour..anyone with a spare hard disk out there ? :D I also noticed that Blogger is quite sluggish compared to Xanga. Is anyone using the new Blogger Beta? It looks pretty cool...

Just yesterday, as I was walking out of the school (school's already over at that time of course, I don't ponteng wan :D) with my friends, we were chatting bout last week's school holidays. So yeah, I mentioned to my friend that I was at this conference in SIB KL and didn't do any sort of revision whatsoever during the entire week. Halfway through the conversation he said that "You know ah, you Christians ah, like to gather one oh..You see us Buddhists like to do stuff, like donate blood. So good what? I get paid ten bucks somemore..."

Lest you get the wrong impression of a heated religious debate, we were just chatting casually about it. (And I didn't get paid for MY blood...is A-type blood cheaper?) He couldn't finish his sentence when we came to the gate and he went off to the bicycle shack. I didn't really think about the whole matter but I just let it linger in my mind. At home, I thought about what he said and yeah, to a certain degree his comments made sense. It did feel like we (I'm saying SJGC in general) aren't doing much for the community. I mean, the way I see it the emphasis is more on spreading the gospel and less on community service, what with all the Christian concerts and conferences doing mass evengelisms here and there.

I found myself caught between the two sides of the coin. On one hand, we could really put some effort into giving a little back to the public community around us. It sure is easy to be complacent with our lives. I have many things that I complain about, like how I'd like a new laptop and more pocket money. But everyday when it's time for lunch or dinner, I know that I'd be stoned for such lack of gratitude. My mom's the kind to never let us complain that there's not enough food, so a typical meal could feed many poor and hungry people around the world. I mean, I have yet to see anyone else whose mom makes rice with fried eggs and nuggets for breakfast before going to school in the morning. Most of the people I've asked are lucky to have a glass of milk, let alone cooked rice. And all the time there are people out there who live in such terrible, horrible conditions that you could hardly imagine what it's like to be in their shoes.

But then again the more articulate among you might argue that we should put God first. That God is the one who is able to make things right, so our first priority is to worship him and pray for those who are suffering. Like, how much can you alone do to help other people? How much can one church do? Just sit back and wait for God to save the people. If there's anyone who can do it, it's gotta be God, right?

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

Interestingly, because my PC died while I was halfway writing this, I went to look up for some info in my bible regarding this issue. And I came to 2 Peter something..it went "Since everything will be destroyed in this way,what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed it's coming....But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness." Just like that, my questions were answered. (God must've thought very thoroughly about the questions that we would ask of him when He planned His salvation for us) It says 'holy and godly lives', so I take it that it goes back to obeying God's commands. The first being loving God fully and deeply, while the second loving our 'neighbours' as ourselves. Which means that yes, worshipping God comes first but it is also important that we make an effort to those around us who are not as fortunate as us. Community service, I feel, should come from having a close relationship with God where we realise how much he loves everyone and not just us, that we should feel compelled from our own hearts to spread God's love to other people, especially the non-believers.

I know it's hard, loving others as ourselves brings to mind something that only young children could do, like how they share candy, pillows, toys and what-nots so affectionately, sharing because they want to and not expecting anything in return. No wonder Jesus looked upon children so lovingly....

Lost in wonder...

Finally, I'm back home early today! Ah..in case you didn't know, as of now I am currently attending a youth conference (like a workshop lah) in SIB KL (http://sibkl.org.my/htm/home.htm) church. It started with an opening night concert on Tuesday and today was a full-day workshop. Anyway, I just thought I'd post about what happened on the Tuesday night concert...

So yeah, there we were: me, Simon, Arjund, Liesl, Jane, Shanice, Ii-Ern, Ii-Shan, Aunty Collene and Aunty Cindy. Of course, before that I think it deserves mention the fact that the ride to the SIB KL church was absolutely positively the zaniest,craziest one that I've experienced so far. I mean, I'd rather not elaborate on it but to sum it up let's just say that now I know KL people are the considered the rudest drivers around....

Okay, back to the concert..so there we were at the hall. Or SANCTUARY as they call it. And goodness it was big..so big. With two projectors projecting on both sides of the stage, the stage looked every bit suitable for an Eason Chan concert, or whoever else for that matter. Much to my chagrin, we had to sit closest to the stage. No chairs for us..(the seatings are ala cinema one) So okay. Nevermind. We sat. And when the event started, I was just sitting there blown away by the amazing programs that the church's media team came up with. It was so proffessional that I thought TV3 or something was there to record the event.

They made it seem like a real tv program, with the proffessional hosts and all. Humor was fairly abundant that night and we were certainly tickled pink by the emcees' antics. Not long after, the concert kicked off. It was the PlanetShakers super-energetic-jump-jump-jump that kind of worship style, as we all expected. I had never been really comfortable when in this kind of concerts, not too keen to lift my hands and jump around and preferring instead to just sing along. So, yeah, it was awkward..(they asked us to take five steps to the front in the beginning, and only Kelvin and I walked in front. When I looked back I was like 'What the??! Hoi, what you all doing at the back?!?!?" By now I was hopelessly close to the stage and what to do, when they started jumping I felt compelled to follow along. Ouch...

It was certainly VERY tiring to sing and jump around at the same time, so I take my hat off to the seven or eight on-stage singers who seemed to be running on Energisers while my Eveready left me breathless halfway through the songs....But one thing that I couldn't understand was that why need to jump? I mean...I just don't get it. So I did what I could, following the crowd somewhat aimlessly, not being able to really focus on worshipping and pulled back by my self-consciousness.

That was, until they sang the don't know how many-eth song...I kept thinking and pondering and finally, I figured out that it was never about jumping in the first place. Nor the fancy guitars. Nor the funky drum beats and the killer synthesizer tunes. It was just...just worshipping God. Just giving God all of me, giving Him everything; my soul, my mind, my body. Even if it's only for a moment. A minute. A second. It was about synchronizing with God's wavelength...the singing was just one of the means to help me do so. And two songs came to mind, first Martin Layzell's Lost In Wonder. The title says it all, lost in wonder...when truly close to God's presence, you are truly lost in wonder of just how awesome, how great God is. Another line in the song is "...lost in, love....", nicely summarising God's sea of love for us.

The second song that came to me was none other than Matt Redman's Heart Of Worship. I could feel it there. By removing the music mentally, all I saw were several pillars light signifying spiritual connection. The singers on stage all truly made an effort to connect and reach out to God, and I finally felt comfortable enough to jump with them. I jumped, because my entire focus by then was already on God. Being the mere human being that I am, jumping around was just what I could do to express my worship to God. But of course, rest assured that I won't be jumping around in church any time too soon. It's just that I've learned something about this whole worship thing. Slowly but surely, I am beginning to piece together the little fragments of knowledge that I have regarding this whole issue of what makes a true and whole-hearted worship. It remains though, that I still have a long way to go, and I'm certainly curious as to how we're gonna be worshipping God eternally in Heaven, with "no less time to worship God than when we first started". I just can't wait to know........

PC Blues...

Yesterday, I was still happily surfing the web with my trusty ol' computer when I happened to chance upon this cool program to change the looks of Windows. So okay, I got it. I installed it. Mana tau it clashed with what I previously installed (a similar program) and through a series of wrong moves I finally managed to bring my PC to its knees.....It literally suffered a heart attack and wouldn't go beyond the first 5 minutes after starting up before hanging. Of course, being the sensible and experienced computer user that I am, I just slapped my forehead and uttered the popular catchphrase of all the computer users who are just too curious for their own good:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

For that I was forced to spend the rest of my entire evening just to get my PC back to life. Take note that it's now just barely working and needs further maintenance. This is exactly what I hate most about computers: why are they SO easy to mess up with?!!? But then again, computers are made by humans, and being the fallen people that we are, it's just normal that our 'creations' don't work properly all the time I guess. The other thing is that I'm the only one in my house with enough experience to keep the PC running clean (my sis is a casual user while my bro doesn't have that much time to maintain the PC) so I've got 'heavy responsibilities',so to speak. And my sis asks me why I bother...doh.

On a lighter note, I borrowed two cameras for my brother's graduation day and snapped some really funny pics.

No prize for guessing what happens next :D

My sis, me and my mum. Note how it says 'UM' on top of my head. Looks almost like I'm wearing a cap...

My cousin Chi Mei and her sis. Photogenic eh?

To the battle station!!!


The battle station it is!!!

On a slightly different topic, I've always wished that I had a scanner actually. Then I'd be able to edit all my drawings on the computer...Puey Guan currently has my dream workstation : a WACOM tablet (to draw directly on the PC), a scanner and ORIGINAL photoshop software. Drool drool.... but armed with a 4 megapix Canon camera, this is what I managed to cook up using an ALMOST ORIGINAL (original in every way except that I didn't pay for it) copy of an Adobe software called ImageReady. Feel free to comment XDNote: I drew this on my chemistry notes,heheh

Kajang no more...

At the recommendation of my cousin Chi Mei, I managed to arrange with Justin to go to a musical titled ROCK YOU (or something like that) staged at Cempaka (a private school ). So okay , I went to the school's site to print out the map, but I couldn't. (stupid site) So I drew it out. On the map, it looked like a pretty easy route, straight and all. I mean, look at this :


Of course, I wouldn't be blogging bout this if we actually managed to make it there in time. Rather, we never found our way there...it did look like we were on the right track but from the moment we took a wrong turn (or so I think) everything after that just went awry.....we soon found ourselves driving aimlessly around the place. Heck, we took a U-turn after thinking that we took a wrong turn like I said earlier (the U-turn was VERY far from where we turned in) only to find that we were STILL on the wrong path. It was already dark and there was no way we could tell where we were. All we saw were signs leading to Kajang (cause the map said to follow the signs posted to Kajang)

And to make things worse, some parts of the roads that we passed had these really, really eerie-looking overhead sign boards. They had black stains all over them like you normally see in those horror movies. And almost the entire stretch of some particular roads were near pitch-black and empty...~shivers~

We were even more afraid when not realizing that we made a U-turn earlier, we came back to a very familiar spot, the overhead bridge where we made the wrong turn. We went like "Eh? What the? OH NO!!!! What's happening?!!?" and it certainly didn't help that Judson kept saying that he read of a similar story in Singapore Ghost Stories (a popular horror story collection series) about getting stuck in cursed roads or something like that....it was crazy to say the least.

Not to mention that we were spooked out by the Kajang road signs. They're everywhere! Whichever way we turned we still saw the 'Kajang' followed by an upwards arrow road signs. And there was this road fork where both the roads lead to Kajang apparently. It almost seemed like all the roads led to Kajang. If possible, I wish never having to utter this stupid word again. Stupid road signs....

But having failed to catch the musical, we didn't give up hope. Justina suggested we go to Shah Alam to see One In A Million (if you don't know what's that, ask your friends :D) at the studio, and to Shah Alam we went. The real interesting performance was by Faizal who managed to squeeze Ashley Simpson's L.O.V.E into a manly rock song!!! It was memorable alright, never thought I'd hear a guy's version of that song. And the night ended with....McDonalds. I'm surprised of course that there are more people around midnight than during the entire day...

Justin made pretty good use of McDonald's 'free fries' card and made a mini mountain of fries. Check his blog for the pic if you're curious XD

Not a proper post...

Just wanna post a link for a Japanese song. I thought the guitar licks (is that what you call it? licks...) were pretty cool,haha. Enjoy :D

http://rapidshare.de/files/28133503/Hirano_Aya_-_God_knows.mp3.html

Updating ain't easy...

While I really enjoyed the fact that some of you enjoyed reading my posts, I find that blogging has somewhat become a chore for me. Suddenly, I felt like I have 'fans' to answer to,so to speak. And this is just so different than when i first started blogging, when I blogged more for my own enjoyment. Now every post seems like it needs to be trimmed and edited to suit public tastes...but then again, maybe it's just me :D

Just want to say that I might seem like I take forever to blog but that's because I need to do research for the topics. Sure, I can hentam but the upcoming topic of my blog takes quite a bit of initaitive to pull off nicely. You'll know when I finally post it, or if you can't wait then you can ask Justin,haha. As I'm kinda busy this week (St. John's exam coming soon, this Saturday) I might not be able to post anymore this week but I'll do my best. Over and out guys!

The Birthday Cake Of The Century

Having just celebrated James' mom's birthday last week, this week I had the opportunity to celebrate yet another person's birthday. You know who you are, birthday girl. I'm not referring to Hannah cause I couldn't go for the whole surprise party thing(won't they sort of expect a surprise party if it's done too often?), Happy Birthday to Miss YJ!! (I didn't wish you cause it wasn't your birthday that day)

I must say that a tremendous amount of planning had gone into making this birthday celebration a success. The plan had to be chanced numerous times and countless hours were spent discussing the whole matter of where to celebrate and how to celebrate it. Zhen Ee was the one who wanted to celebrate it in the first place though I dunno why...nudge nudge wink wink :D He so semangat wanted to do it at Secret Recipe somemore. In the end we DID do it at Secret Recipe but the cake wasn't what we expected lah.....sorry YJ :oP

The dinner at Pizza Hut was at 6 plus, so I hung around for a while there after I arrived in front of Taylor's College shortly after 3 o'clock. And what a good thing it is that I'm not studying there, I don't think that I could get used to it ler...so much freedom. Too much freedom, in fact. Zhen Ee had mentioned to me of the one time when he was in Physics class and paying attention when suddenly, a couple sitting in front of him decided to lock lips. Right there. While the teacher's teaching. Like...woah. I would've had them hung and shot and hung again for such public disrespect if I were there :D

But this being about the birthday, I'd talk about that in the post. Back to the topic, I was wondering whether I'd be able to meet some of my old friends there and moments later,there they were: Brian+Catherine (I put the '+' sign cause couple), Kay Boon, Pik Ying and er..yeah. Them. And then I was wondering whether I'd meet Jasmine who's in Business School and funnily enough I saw her too while on the way to cafe. Why didn't I think whether I'd find a million dollars by the road side...darn.

Although much thought went into planning the whole thing, it turned out to be a somewhat dull affair. Maybe it's because it wasn't a surprise. I guess that's how it works ler. Surprise surprise... Some more YJ got Bio test the following day lah, so I guess couldn't really enjoy lah. Anyway, I heard she was surprised today by some of her other classmates, so it kinda put a damper on the previous day's celebration. Haih...but the important thing is that you enjoyed yourself k, Miss YJ?

But anyway, the highlight of the celebration was not the cake itself (Secret Recipe Classic Cheese) but rather the way the candles were put!! I mean, I doubt anyone's seen this kind of candle arrangement. Have a look yourself, here's the original cake :

And here's the 'battleship-style' candle-lit cake....

TADAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You've got to give her credit man, cause she insisted that it be arranged this way. Memang creative betul...

Once again, hope you had a great time for this year's birthday, Miss Tan Yik Jing!!!!!!