hakuna matata

new year's eve!

man, i feel so lazy. i think i've watched like 4 movies in the past 2 days. attempted to figure out my classes (still need to shop), supposed to start looking for jobs to apply to and i really did try this morning but now i've given up due to lack of motivation and am clearing up my computer. haha. sigh... it IS rather important too. why is job hunting so difficult -_- joanna's email is right though, if we don't have troubles we'll forget all about God. funny huh. even though I do see Him in all the beauty that I see...

anyhow. it's been a good break. although i wonder how the next tahoe trip will be.. i hope snow is good. and i can carve down blues properly :p i was reading over my logs from previous breaks/trips and am quite amazed at how patient my friends have been in teaching me. sean, jon, yongji... and i always had trouble with toe-ing. haha. good times!

i kind of wish there was a set path for me to go. so far it's pretty easy, it's been school, pri --> sec --> jc --> college. it's just which school i end up in. now it's the whole wide world! ahhh. would really like some guidance here. although for some reason i suddenly felt like i wanted to restrict my search to california i.e. norcal. i guess i'm not actually that keen on living anywhere else.. that IS rather restricting though. the same way i don't want to do 9am classes and don't want to do anything super-techy which is going to be painful. hmmm. don't know if that's the best strategy.

still missing my rg girls. where's lyd's christmas card?? haha. and my silly bro sent a card to my dorm so it's going to sit there until school starts cos the housing desk ain't open.

can't believe it's my graduation year. like, the actual calendar year. a little scary.

sitting at the denver airport.. yay for WORKING wifi! SJC was a disappointment, they had these signs advertising free public wifi and it wasn't working. anyhow, yay for holidays! somehow today after i was done packing i just felt like i was so ready to leave california and escape from stanford for a bit. maybe i should've gone home after all, get to see all my other friends. but tis okay, i get to hang out with sharon for a week :) somehow having to transit just reminds me of going home though, since usually i fly non-stop within the US (unless its cheaper, like what i'm doing now).

anyhow. i got off the plane and then headed for foood (it was like 7:30PM PST). saw the mcdonald's/domino's area and it was so eerily familiar.. and then i realized it was a replay of sophomore year thanksgiving after we finished 4 days of snowboarding at winter park! bittersweet, leaving a new bunch of crazy hilarious friends.. can't believe it's been two years since then. time flies.

and i realized i have to take 5 classes each quarter to graduate on time. should i take another quarter? i REALLY don't want to though.. weirdly enough. i guess i've sort of had enough of school and taking finals and what not. the end is in sight. even though it means loss of discretionary free time, like daryl said.. and job search. bleahh.. hopefully i have enough motivation to get back to that after coming back from bahamas/florida :p although i now have to update my resume bcos my gpa has gone down.. sigh.

for some odd reason i really really wish i was home. i want to see lyd & chris & pam.. and jackie's back home too. where are people when i need them?! alright, enough with the melancholy. it probably doesn't help that i'm sitting in an airport on my own and everything's closed cos it's 10:30PM. 1 more hour to boarding... and then i'll be vegetating at orlando airport till sharon arrives. hope they have free internet too.. haha.

oh and i just watched this korean dance movie which i got hooked on in freshman winter break on the way back home.. watched it like 2 or 3 times on my SQ flight. so that reminded me of freshman winter break.. and that's been 3 years! such an odd feeling.

i am still eating way too much.. so fat! thankfully serene persuaded me to bring my sports shoes. i shall aspire to workout on the ship, as boring as that sounds. aha. should've brought more shorts along, now that i think about it.. oh well.

i just saw a bird in the airport!!! this is so crazy. wonder how it got in here.. and then it landed on the water fountain and drank from it!

so odd... this somehow reminded me of listening to a particular passage while i was at the gym quite a few saturdays ago and then hearing that same passage during the acappella concert a few hours later, from testimony (the christian acappella group). unfortunately i don't recall offhand what the passage was, but it was so coincidental it seemed like it meant something..

and it happened again today! so i decided (finally, haha) to read some passage of the bible today after lunch, was a little distracted so needed to focus on something. and then i randomly flipped to mark 5:21 - 43.. which talks about a woman who touched Jesus' cloak and got healed of her blood issue (whatever that is), and a synagogue ruler came to ask Jesus to heal his daughter who was dying, when they got to his house the servants said she'd died already, don't bother. but Jesus raised her from the dead. anyway, so i did go for all campus praise night tonight and one of the passages read was luke 8:40-56, which is the exact same passage but just told by a different author. anyway, i was FLOORED. the same passage! (and given that i don't even read my Bible daily this is quite a big thing)

the verses that stood out to me:
mark 5:28 she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

36Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."

just believe. that is so powerful. anyhow, i took more of the faith bit from it, but osagie was saying that it's about desperation, the two (woman & ruler) came to Jesus cos nobody else could help them. i don't think i'm that desperate. wonder if that's a good thing or bad... hm. two-pronged. but i do think it's a reminder of how powerful faith can be.

well again

so i think i'm recovered from that bout of un-Christendom. it was really quite bad, now that i think about it.. for those 5 days. eep... was quite hellish, really. couldn't sleep properly, thoughts were all messed up and was so stressed out. now i'm back to being myself and not worrying too much (okay, now i'm wondering if i can finish this midterm in time) and can focus on others instead of myself, pray for their safety & well-being & all. feels soo much better. and yesterday's 'run' was good too. can't really call it a run since it wasn't a treadmill, but it was a running sort of elliptical. rather interesting concept.

even though it seems like i've wasted (kind of) my quarter recruiting and have nothing to show for it i'm not all that concerned about it. i mean, it's done and i tried, so that's all there is.. admittedly it sucks to have to tell people that i don't have a job yet, but oh well! ohhh! it was so exciting, one of my friends got an offer today and i was like YAY!!! cos she'd been getting rejections too and now i actually know someone with an offer! so awesome :) anyway, i am somewhat at peace. about this job thing. even though it looks like i'll have to recruit again next quarter (pfft) i don't care, i'm still going to go boarding lots! yippee :)

in the midst

of this crappy interviewing season, i realized i'm very blessed in academics bc i'm actually still doing pretty well for now. i mean, my midterms were spread out enough that i had time to study and catch up, even with all the interviews. although better not say so soon, i'm so lost in this probability class and haven't started on the take-home midterm yet.

and running out frustrations is SO good... man. i pretty much vented all my stress/frustration/anger on the precor machine. haha. and felt good after that. well, physically tiring but i guess that helps... yay!

a hard week

[written on sat] i have to admit yesterday was quite a bad day for me, if not for the church bunch (haha, that's what i call them now) who were celebrating pearline's bday by cooking (yay good food!), playing rockband, playing with barney's & peiying's dogs (yay animals/dogs in particular) and playing cranium (general silliness all around). it is really hard to trust God in such times (slew of rejections on Thurs/Fri). well, just 3 out of 5. and the longer i wait for the others, the less likely it is that I have an offer, I think.

[written on tues] still finding it hard to trust. i think i am so overwrought i can't sleep past 9am anymore, it's quite terrible. really goes in cycles, for a while i'm carefree and then it comes back to haunt me. !!! bleah. it's so silly too, me worrying about whether they're going to give me offers is not going to change anything. -_- God has blessed me with such an incredible experience at Stanford even though i know there's nothing special really that set me apart from the tons of other Singaporeans who applied here, so I should know that He will always provide for me.

and dayoung's so funny, yesterday morning she finally got a call fr mck and so could finally commit to signing w parthenon and she said she felt SO happy like she hadn't felt this quarter at all, going after her want to work in NY and feeling like it was forced and what not. but i'm so glad she's relaxed now, that's how senior year's supposed to be!

on another note, i remember sean/kevin saying that decision analysis was kinda interesting but some people think it's bs. I certainly think i fall into the latter category... or maybe cos i'm not even taking the class seriously. haha. but honestly, i don't see myself assigning probabilities and preferences and drawing trees and sensitivity analyses and using value of clairvoyance and what not.

although, granted, colin did give me an interesting argument for the existence of God. assign a probability p that there is a God. so let's say that p is pretty small, and so 1 - p is big. and then from that, think of all the good things that happened to you and assign a probability q1 to the possibility of them all happening by chance. it's probably not going to be very high, and when you multiply that by 1 - p, it'll probably be smaller than p*q2 (where q2 is p(good things happen with a God)). although, i need to think about the converse side with bad things happening...

incredibly blessed

wow. so far, my track record is still nice and pretty, all invitations for final rounds! God is amazing. well, not like I didn't know that already. now... i just need the offers. haha. i feel so greedy... i guess i do only need one offer though getting a bunch would be really cool. i'm not sure what would be best either. anyhow... waiting is so hard! bleah. it's like a perpetual game, who's gotten a call, who hasn't.

anyway, this week is crazy. i had two first rounds today (total 3 interviews), final rounds tmr (4 interviews), final rounds thurs (4 interviews, i assume) and final rounds fri (4 interviews). that is almost as many cases as i practiced for BEFORE starting any interviews. i am so cased-out right now. it's not that the problems aren't interesting, but it's just tiring. ah well, by the end of this week i will be such an interviewing machine. and hopefully have offers so i can stop interviewing! eek. and actually catch up on my classes and all.

midterm tmr, pray hard! aaah.

sigh!

have to get up early for akpsi tmr but don't feel like sleeping, don't feel like doing anything. i never realized how much time recruiting takes. first, it's the info sessions. then it's submitting applications. then it's the actual interviews. it's really as good as a 5 unit class, which i didn't realize. and the emotional stress of waiting etc. i trust in Him and His grace as so far He has greatly provided for me. like Misha pointed out to me yesterday at dinner, I have been very lucky (well I would say blessed) in that for all my interviews (besides Bain 1st rounds this morning), I have gotten called back for second rounds. I'm just praying for more favour with my interviewers and trying not to worry/think about it, so many other things to worry about! haha. wellll. I guess I also have to remember "which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?" (Matt 6:27) and a cubit = 45cm. haha.

anyhow i'm tired and i want a break but there is no break to be had until thanksgiving! before then i have 2 final rounds lined up and also a midterm (i.e. 4 classes worth of stuff to catch up on) and then another midterm a week later for which i'm probably even more lost... ahhhh. needs lots and lots of grace and a miracle (or a couple, haha).

but i guess hearing joseph's story about how he ended up doing well in his midterm contrary to expectations does help me restore my faith. yay! now for sleep... plus remembering how i met joanna as i was leaving for my interview and her story about getting so much help for her paper which she was so worried for and really praying for a miracle.. although sometimes i think 'miracle' is bandied about a little carelessly by us, hm.

meeting up with ben was fun, although i realized i've been doing so many cases and dealing with numbers in hundreds of millions that when i see "$28 million" net worth for an individual at 26 years old i didn't even realize right off that it is QUITE a bit of money... hm. so odd.

emotionally tiring day

sigh! first, i decided to recalibrate my macbook. so that involves not having a computer for a while (it has to be in sleep mode for 5 hours and then i can start charging it and while it's charging i'm not supposed to use it).

second, i was supposed to figure out where the heck my applecare was. applecare is basically insurance for apple products, and apparently has to kick in by the time my one-year warranty for this macbook expires, which is tomorrow. so... it got delivered on saturday, but manz housing office isn't open on weekends so "a notice was left".
this morning, i go to the housing desk, no notice! she says, go to the post office.
so i did, later, and they said nonono, it won't go to the post office, go back to your housing desk.
back at home (they email when we have stuff at the housing desk) but still nothing!
bro suggests i call usps to find out where it is. and they tell me it's at the post office.
back to the post office i go. the guy asks for the tracking number, so i've to run to the nearby music library to check it on my gmail. they try to look for it, still isn't at the post office.
5pm, i'm back in my room and i have an email from the housing desk at 4:48pm. crap! i run down to the housing desk, but it IS 5pm so the supervisor's gone... sigh. SO frustrating, you can't imagine.

third, i was supposed to hear from BCG & McKinsey about final rounds today, but they both decide to delay telling us until Wednesday! I'm like.. aughhh. Oh, so actually the McKinsey recruiter called me and I was like !!! she's going to tell me if I got final rounds! and then she starts asking about visa stuff instead and I'm like ahhhh.

fourth, i got this book that i ordered off amazon for my class (finally, it arrived like a MONTH late, i don't know how that happened) and realized it was the wrong edition! sigh... i should probably withdraw my claim. anyway, this textbook has been causing me great inconvenience and i was so glad it arrived until i realized it's the wrong edition!!! ugh. i guess it doesn't matter THAT much, but i don't know. baaah. anyway it was vaguely upsetting

fifth, i find out that the founder of the startup i worked at quit a MONTH ago. -in shock- cos my ex-boss decided to email me to catch up and update me on that part of the situation... and i've been talking to pple there on and off and never heard a squeak about it! anyway, i think that was the last straw, cos after that i really was like i cannot do any work at the moment, this is like emotional upheaval (cumulative). he was so passionate about the product and this is like his baby! how can he just leave it?! even though ser said it's quite normal for startup founders to do that... i think it's so different when you know the person though, and how much effort he put into it and everything. coming to office at 6am, not sleeping, working through weekends, etc, ?!!! but anyway...

sigh. time for bed! tmr all will be well again :)

tired..

wish recruiting was over! two interviews coming up and case practice after case practice after case practice.. so tiring. and i still don't know if i'm prepared, exactly. anyhow it felt like i was striving so hard and so yesterday the sermon was helpful. to remember that ultimately God is in control of my life and it may be that consulting isn't right for me anyway, even if i prep like crazy. although i guess it would be kind of annoying if i've put so much time into preparing and nothing comes out of it (again), like last year. but at the same time it's hard not to stress when i see other people prepping and all.. competition is tough. good reminder of clenched fist vs. open palm. one is stressful, not willing to let go. open palm is just.. open! and free.

alright i've decided that the way to look at more cases is that it's meeting people/getting to hangout for a bit even though we're doing cases. that'll make it better. :)

the priestly blessing

so i was listening to the sermon of the week by bethel church in redding, which was by wesley campbell and it was about "the priestly blessing". okay, i didn't finish listening to it but what i got from it so far was that it's selfish to not ask for blessings. because if you overflow, other people get blessed too! haha. so exciting. anyway, so wesley campbell said this is the most-often quoted passage in the Bible and here it is:

Numbers 6
22 The LORD said to Moses, 23 "Tell Aaron and his sons, 'This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:
24 " ' "The LORD bless you and keep you;
25 the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
26 the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace." '
27 "So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them."

and then later, when i went to the homecoming acappella concert with Qianwen, the exact same passage came up because Testimony (christian acappella group) sang it! I was stunned. like, seriously. what are the odds of my downloading this particular sermon and having the key passage come up two hours after at an acappella concert... anyhow, i haven't really figured out why God is telling me about that passage yet, but i'm sure something will illuminate itself tmr at church or something. :)

oh!! and campbell said "blessing" in hebrew means to endue with power for success, prosperity, fecundity, longevity, etc.. kind of powerful.

and some other random thing i never posted. my dorm, kimball has 2 halls on each floor (because we're a weird H-shaped building). and this year it's "kimbroadway" (our theme is broadway, which is awesome :) and my hall happens to be the lion king hall!! so my blog title is particularly apt. as linus pointed out when i moved in, but for some reason i didn't post it. so here it is :)

blessed!

many times! haha. it was so funny, when tu and porsche (yep, that's his name.. thai pple :p) knocked on my door i was vaguely surprised (cos last year it was just a whole bunch of sealnetters at my door) and wondering what was going on... and i thought they wanted to throw me in the shower immediately cos tu was like take off your glasses and close your eyes! which i refused to. aha. anyhow, it was a very pleasant surprise (and slightly shocking, really) to see so many pple in the kimball lounge! aww. <3 much love. all my favourite people at stanford. well, maybe not ALL, but the large majority. haha. sealnetters + singaporeans. so nice to see everyone :) although it's kinda weird cos as the years pass, the mix of people changes and now i'm the senior! !!! aah. anyhow, i should really sleep. oh, psets... ah well. God's grace is enough. oh, speaking of which, i didn't have to have extra meeting tonight for markstrat (this business simulation), SO glad about that. :)

o ye of little faith

4 hours at the career fair (and in the sun) without food left me feeling oh so drained... when i came back i REALLY did not want to be doing anymore career related stuff or even talking to people. haha. but i still had two info sessions to go to. of which i didn't really talk to ppl, heh. oh well. and then dayoung & connie were doing case studies and i'm like ah... i need to do more prep, given how much i suck at structure.. and it just led me down this path of being negative and still not knowing what i want for a job (i don't really want to work, i don't know if i like studying much either, ...) and ended up convincing myself that this fall is going to end up like all the past winter quarters where i did NOT have a job by the end of the quarter!

okay actually i suppose i could find something else cool to do. but it's just so... aiyah. i hate recruiting so much. alright i should stop digging myself into this ditch. but so i just remembered part of a verse (kind of reprimanding myself - how in line with glen's message last week about how we need to preach the sermon to ourselves more often...) - "o ye of little faith"

and here's the passage:
Matt 6:30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

church insights today

i can't imagine how i didn't understand it, but today at church i got some insights which were quite startling! but before that... one more coincidence to add to the food-happiness of yesterday (although this one isn't food-related). so for some reason this morning i was thinking about who was going to be at church and realized i hadn't seen ih ming in a while (and he also owes me $ for lisa's bday present, haha). and then when we got to church he was there! like, wow. what are the odds, since he travels 2-3 times a month.

so during opening worship i was reminded of dewen's email on his bible class on hearing God's voice. and it kind of linked to how last year sicheng was saying he kept seeing palindromes around and thought that was God's way of telling him He was around.. and then i suddenly had this revelation that this series of three coincidences (or whatever you want to call them - my thinking about certain things and having them happen) was God's way of speaking to me. for now, at least. kind of reminded me of summer too... the humour @ bluepulse + the 1st time i got to hangout w ser after a looong time as a response to how i was thinking about the relative lack of laughter after rgs when reading my diaries.

i was telling lisa about the food thing, and how i was (obviously) very happy with my newfound delicacies, and she said, "God knows how to make you happy" and I was like hmm it is kind of sad that now food makes me happy, i'm quite sure it wasn't THAT important before i met jackie (yes, i blame you. i would NEVER have waxed lyrical about honey butter before spending time with you..)

one other thing: last night i was totally freaking out about how many job apps i have to do this week, plus the markstrat simulation which drove me nuts since friday, but we made our decisions today so just have to write the 1pg paper which i sent a draft out already, so it's up to the other two to edit now.. and fitting exercise in and God-time (although recently i came up with this ingenious idea of listening to sermon podcasts while elliptical-ing, only tried it once though) and case-interview-prac and doing hw/making sure my grades are still good.

anyway, the pastor was talking about mark's journey today and asked us "what is the purpose? what is your calling?" and i had another blinding revelation that school and grades are so small and insignificant if i look at my life from the bigger picture. or from the view of eternity. but not even that, it was/is like an entire universe and this is just one little speck.. even so, it's hard for me to let go of that i guess. still wanna do well and everything. brand names are still alluring. oh, the woes of being raised in singapore and going through an elite education system.

and i've just spent 20mins writing this when i really should've been struggling over econ and philosophy -wry look-. i should be glad that econ is interdisciplinary but i didn't sign up for this when i decided to take this class! -_- psht. philosophy is so incomprehensible sometimes, makes me think of how sean said it required lots of weed. haha.

a fortuitous food day!

no seriously, it's so weird... i suppose it kind of makes up for my not having had tea (sob). was supposed to go to lisa's tea treasures (yes, it IS one of those out-of-a-storybook places) w jackie after her LSAT, but they said they were FULL! man, can't believe they're that popular. but actually in this rich neighborhood it probably shouldn't be very surprising. anyhow, we had crepes instead. (and it was 2:30 by then). anyhow, after eating the galette (savoury crepe) i was like hmm maybe i should've ordered a sweet crepe instead cos i love sweet stuff! but, too late. so, too bad.

so somewhere along the way back jackie & i were talking about sprinkles cos it was one of the things she was really looking forward to while holing herself in her apartment LSAT-ing, and she said she'd probably go sometime... after taking orders from different people and ordering. and then when i got home, dayoung brought sprinkles home!!!! so exciting. she went with her big sib to stanford shopping center. and of course i couldn't resist and i ate half of it (which, incidentally, is 242.5 kcal). it's really amazing how many calories these dessert things are... cheesecake factory is just as bad/even worse.

anyway, so for dinner we went with dawn & friends to go eat dumplings at cupertino. and i know ranch99 is in cupertino but you know, it's asian town so the dumpling place could be anywhere right. but it turned out to be at cupertino village, which is where ranch99 IS! so yayyy i got my hello panda! :) which i was also talking about with jackie while driving her back from LSAT. and then cupertino village also reminded me of how we used to go with sean & joel to grocery-shop/eat there, and how daryl devoured 13 packets of pocky in 2 days, and ... and then i just (very randomly) caught sean online and he & jia'en are coming for thanksgiving! so exciting.

speaking of which i still need to figure out thanksgiving and winter break.... eeks. in the midst of markstrat-ing (this business simulation with TONS of info we need to assimilate) and recruiting (i think i've like 8 apps due this week) i think i'm going to go crazy soon... i so need God's grace this quarter. and i really hope i have a job by the end of this quarter! and that my grades don't go down the drain!

school starts again

it is a very odd experience to go straight from work to back to school... well okay, i did have that dschool thing in between, but that was almost like easing me into the beginning of the new school year. and somehow this year i'm seeing so many differences between working and school, probably because it's not like i'm changing countries (past few years = work in singapore, then chill out for a bit, then fly back to america) and living in the same area.

i finally understand why daryl was talking about how he'd miss having discretionary free time - work is like a huge chunk of your life carved out. classes, on the other hand, don't take that much time and then you have the rest of the day to do whatever (homework, fun, ...)

and the whole experience of sitting in class again (and more often than not, being bored, haha) and getting distracted... okay i've definitely forgotten what i originally intended to say. hm.

oh, i remember. it's kind of weird being able to stay up until like 1am (or 2) and still get enough sleep and be able to go to class. first, it was hard to switch FROM that to making sure i went to bed by 11pm (or midnight) so i wouldn't be too grumpy in the morning (waking up at 730 anyone?) and now it's strange to switch back.... the body is so adaptable.

the end of summer

it's such an odd feeling to be done with work, but today when i got up i felt incredibly free too! i guess it's easy to get used to being restricted to 9 to 6 such that now it's weird going back to being a student when classes only take up so much of your time. hmm. caged bird takes a while to learn to fly free. somehow that reminded me of something i read in a cs lewis book, that people get used to living their current lifestyle, whatever it is, that change is difficult.

anyway, i think i'm getting a little better at saying goodbye, i didn't cry :) well okay almost, near the end of the day, but for the most part i was pretty happy. aha. but it was weird packing up and thinking i wouldn't be walking into that office anymore, etc. it was really nice of CTN to give me a ride home :) although i must admit i think i was sort of preoccupied with the idea of leaving that i didn't make as much of the conversation as i could've.

i'm going to miss them so much, all the jokes and fun times... but it is time for me to move on. or at least, so i kept telling myself. which is partly how i managed to be still quite happy yesterday. aha. wonder if i will keep in touch with them and if so, how many of them... ah well. at least it's easy enough to get up to san mateo :) though actually if they are expanding they will have to move at some point. it's a good location though, all the food and such :p

the past couple of weeks have been up and down, if i remember correctly. last week i somehow got rather sleep deprived and therefore grumpy. so i rectified the situation yesterday (thanks to jackie's LSAT class, no less) and slept 10 hrs!!! :) felt soo good. although i was still rudely awakened by my alarm...

but anyhow, tonight i had a rather thrilling revelation! well, at least, i never really understood the parable of the old and new wine skins - i distinctly doing a bible study on this very topic two years ago (or so) and trying to figure out why old wine belongs in old wineskins and new wine in new wineskins. basically it was really really confusing. and tonight, at chi alpha, we were looking at this text (to do with fasting) and i suddenly had this realization as to why new wine goes in new wineskins and all that, and the oddest thing was that it was connected to my work (and i just realized my colleague spelt my name wrongly on my blogpost -_- incidentally interestingly enough it was the mention of my work and this particular book of the bible that reminded me to look at the company blog) anyway here's the passage:

Luke 5:
33 Then they said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?”
34 And He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”
36 Then He spoke a parable to them: “No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was taken out of the new does not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. 39 And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.’”

anyhow, when i saw 'the old is better' i suddenly realized that it bore resemblance to all the support emails i've been trawling through - people complaining that the old Bluepulse was better and that the new one sucks (even though the new one does have better features/speed/etc). anyway it struck a chord in me and then i looked to verse 33 and realized that the old wine is like the old covenant with laws and all that, and the new wine is Jesus coming with the new covenant based on love... and how people are resistant to change (which my fellow support-colleagues have told me many many times). pretty amazing.

a summer of laughter

so somehow today i just realized this summer has been (for these two weeks, anyway) quite a bit of laughter. i guess especially cos i (finally) got to hang out w ser today, which was nice. :) still as silly as ever.. and i think just a while back, when i was reading my rg diaries, i was lamenting how it seems like i don't seem to laugh as much now. anyway i realized that today, which in turn made me realize how blessed I am this summer and how God has supplied my needs, in a way. I definitely wasn't thinking about laughter or praying consciously that I'd have a lot of fun etc but it just happened! And it isn't just a cursory thing either, the first thing I was struck by when I experienced working at Bluepulse for the first time was that people were joking etc and it was fun.

anyway, i probably have said enough, too much sometimes overdoes it. but it's all very exciting to realize it. that even if I don't ask for it, God still gives me good. :) awesomeness! haha.

different lives.

so i managed to catch hk before i left, and we were talking about how lives we live abroad are rather separate from life in singapore. at least, it was triggered by the fact that i was telling him tt jon said it's actually easy to adjust to being back in sg (despite him thinking that it would be tough/...) and then hk was like yeah, isn't it the case that when we come back we go back to how life was before we left at all. i don't think it's exactly the same, there must be some internal changes (or something, like personality-wise or something), but at the same time... at least for me christian-wise it is. here (US) i'm more involved and back home i'm not particularly connected.

energy. or lack thereof?

how are people like pam and lyd able to be so happy and excited??? i asked lyd and then she said she isn't usually. but then she figured God is in control so why worry etc. I was like wow, that's quite powerful. hm. even my pastors said i need to work on the being (actually more like looking) happy thing last year. not so much this year though... smile, clar, smile. heh. so ridiculous... i need to count my blessings more huh.

somehow today i was reminded of all my inadequacies and things i'm unhappy about (wrt myself).

i also need to remember how i used to be so disciplined in rg and hardworking (as compared to now). sigh! lijia saying she wants to sit with me cos i do my work and so inspire her to do her work. now i never do my work early! ok not never, but rarely. aiee.

the fabulous days of rgs ;)

so i finally dug out my old diaries from rg days (one week after visiting; i should've done it before i think) and relived sec 3 and 4. it's weird how i don't actually remember being so tired all the time and stressed out in sec 4 and trying to cope with piano & jk in sec 3... despairing over my piano and whether to take my dip or not and all that. and i did cry in those days too, which i really didn't remember.

i also rediscovered how i used to look tired. i wonder if i still do?

and it sounded like i laughed a lot more, which is kind of sad (that i don't anymore). many many hysterical fits... even at my piano teacher who can scold REALLY hard sometimes. and i wrote "i'm a creature of laughter". anyway so today i was sitting at the hairdresser's and i brought one of the diaries along, and i couldn't help snorting at some of the things i wrote down and the hairdresser was like what's so funny?? seems like we used to be a lot more ridiculous. so here goes:

our invigilator in sec 1 (who later turned out to be my chinese teacher in sec 2 & 3) - i described him as being "siao" and "rubbing imaginary spots on the whiteboard" - in which mag ng proceeded to imitate him with her calculator (as the whiteboard eraser), exaggerating his actions grossly of course. just the memory of it is enough to tickle me hugely :D

but yeah i think we used to talk a lot more nonsense.. we need more jackie-ism/clar-ism type things man.

and i miss how we had classes to hang out in which stayed with you for a year, at least. and teachers who kind of belong to the class? don't really know how to say it. and our teachers were nice and funny. jc teachers were not bad i guess, but now profs and lecturers are just different. or at least, they aren't terribly amusing or anything.. dunno. and i remember being quite shocked that frosh/sophs/juniors/seniors could all be in the same class, didn't really like that type of arrangement.

anyway i am now re-amazed at how much our teachers invested in us... typing notes and extra sessions and marking our extra assignments and wat not to prep for O's. and how mrs kwan cared so much for us personally. or at least, she was always concerned about whether we were okay and etc (albeit sometimes overly so).

i think i need more paper diaries. my handwriting has also evolved, which is rather interesting. haha. anyway it is more personal than typing, even though typing is faster....

roommates

so at dinner today, there was me and three other rg classmates and our rg tcher... of the three classmates, one's in UK, two are in melbourne. and somehow we got to talking about roommates and i insisted that i thought that it was an essential college experience. whereas the rest were like ?! are you crazy? invasion of personal space!!! i guess my tcher's right in that if i'd lived off campus i probably wouldn't look for a roommate, the whole roommate thing comes as a package with the dorm experience... but i still stand by the fact that i learnt a lot about living with someone else and being aware of others and stuff like that. i mean granted, i did get quite pissed off by my freshman roommate's alarm clock but i learnt a lot from her and about her.. and jackie's sleeping habits are still quite a mystery to me but she taught me about really caring for someone and not being selfish... and dayoung's and stacey's never-sleeping-early philosophy also puzzle me but roommate bonds are really special. going through the craziness of college life and not being able to finish work/study/etc together.

anyway, today's rg visit made me want to dig out all my rg diaries and stuff and relive those days, cos honestly, i do not remember a single thing related to how our lessons went, or how gep classes were different and fun and what not. not like i have something to benchmark against anyway, i wouldn't really know how express classes were like would i? but pam has very strong feelings about how gep made her experience so different and it's sad that our teachers now think that their current raffles academy program isn't that wonderful... ah well. although frankly i don't think my tcher believed i would get into stanford as it was anyway. my academics were okay, i think i was nearer the top even though i wasn't the best, but my extracurriculars were rather unimpressive, really. haha. i guess it is really by God's grace.

friends. after hk said something about how people stop making friends after a while. and how there needs to be a higher threshold before new friends become more than acquaintances... anyway that gave me something to think about on bus rides, and to ask people.

i guess that's a question that has always plagued me, especially since you know, i'm overseas and supposed to be making american friends and not singaporean (or so the logic goes, if i was going to make friends w singaporeans anyway i might as well stay home). i suppose that's not exactly logical, and it's not wrong if i still like hanging out w singaporeans. but i still need to convince myself sometimes. still bothers me sometimes but anyway that wasn't the point of this post.

i've always been surprised by how God has brought me friends in the places i least expect. like, my poor choir buddy i never talked to before going to italy, my colleague at the learning lab whom i at first didn't think was particularly nice (sorry rachel :p you know i love you :)), colleagues at citibank whom i actually got along with (as compared to my internship at MOF, didn't know anyone etc), ... okay i guess the citibank folks are people i just met and we aren't crazy close, but i think i hung out with them enough to be comfortable and have fun with. and i say God provided them because the first two are christians and there were another two christians in the citibank crowd, and i totally did not expect to be meeting christians (or finding out that they are) in my jobs, at least. i don't quite know why.

anyway yeah... so about different thresholds. i don't really know, it really seems to depend on how well i click with someone plus how much effort is put into the relationship. i mean, for one, i was actually quite surprised at how well i clicked w jackie. not that i really remember how we met, even though she describes it to me so often and i'm like really? i don't quite remember that.. but yeah. and i'm actually quite lazy/can go on days without seeing people so i think the poor girl is usually the one calling me up. oops. and then my fellow singaporeans@stanford, i've gone on trips with them, hung out during the year (sometimes), complained about school and life to them. gonna miss the graduating ones awfully:( and there're the sealnet folks..

isn't it more like some old friends fall off your radar as you keep meeting new people? i think i've heard that before too... two schools of thought huh. either moving on while keeping the best old friends or staying with the old friends and not really making very close new ones. actually no, i think i've heard more of the latter... how confusing.

yay home! i was SO thankful for SQ when i was on the way back... 11 hour flights are torturous. although i wasn't that enchanted by SQ's movie selection this time, sadly. and yay for free wireless @ Seoul airport.

the most amazing/hilarious thing happened - so i got home at 1am+, slept at 2am, when i woke up it was dark and i saw "7" on my watch but couldn't tell whether it was AM/PM, so i assumed it was AM, although i was quite puzzled as to how come I was feeling so rested if I'd only slept for 5 hrs - you have to remember that i'd slept 3 hrs for the past two nights before i left, and probably even less on the plane... anyway i decided that i had to go back to sleep if it'd only been 5 hrs, but 1/2hr later my brother thunders into the room and insists that i get up. and i'm like wat?! no i'm going back to sleep! and then he said it was dinnertime and i was like OH, i thought it was morning. haha. i was very happy :) 18 hrs without getting up! apparently my mom came in at 7 to check if i was awake, which woke me up.

anyway, other random thoughts on the way home and when i got home:
when at the airport, staring at the blue sky, somehow i just realized how my good friends are graduating and i'm sad. that they won't be around to go out with, cook with (rarely, and i don't do the cooking :p) and share experiences with, basically. so now i know why jon and cs were complaining that 3 years is too short.

and when i got home, i realized i missed my parents. like having friends is great (i remember reading somewhere that friends are family that you choose), but having family to take care of you is good too. heh.

another thing when i got home (in general) is that singapore has changed, and the less often i come back (or the longer i stay in the US), the more used i get to being in the US and singapore starts getting more foreign, which is a little sad...

so once again, i think mommy was right in telling me NOT to TA this stupid class.. it has brought me nothing but trouble since the start of the quarter... but then again i really thought God was leading me to it. maybe i was just blinded by the idea that i was going to earn $ (not really, anymore, given circumstances >.<) and that TAing is like a prestige thing cos it actually means i'm competent (which really, i've questioned the entire quarter)

okay yes i'm in a rather bad mood at the moment... there're just some things you wish you could turn back time and erase, but it can never happen. wish i was home and could forget about all this crap. WHY did this have to happen.. okay i still need to study for a final tomorrow.

tired! !!! tired of so many things. at least my creativity presentation is done, phew :) and i'm rather ashamed i was so insistent that my cable was the correct one when it clearly wasn't, i guess stress was running a little high but still.. sigh. i guess i've just been a little frustrated with the team in general for the whole quarter so it builds up. such a terrible person :(

and last night i did something i haven't done in a very very long while.. falling asleep without an alarm [which was really an honest mistake, i suppose i didn't press the 'save' button or something.. -_- anyway thank God that i still got up in time to be writing my negotiation journal now.

but yes, tired of my classes, of going to class, of doing the homework. and it's not like the classes aren't cool but it's just a feeling. 'just a feeling'... anyway yesterday i got bored while painting [has happened quite a few times b4 actually, frustrating when it isn't looking the way i want it to], i don't feel like going to class/...

i think it was a mistake to TA now. how weird. but i really shouldn't complain cos i'm getting paid. but i also feel like i'm not working enough to justify the pay but again who ever does... >< prof is so hard to deal with (or at least, i always feel like it's a game of fencing with him or something. maybe cos i see how many different 'faces' he has and i'm afraid. it is really kind of weird and i don't know what it is. i thought God led me to this job but i really don't know anymore. but it is kind of cool to see how stuff works. it seems that my mom is always right. haha.

700th post!

I think this is something I struggle with sometimes:

fr C.S. Lewis [in Tim Keller's Reason for God book]:

Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.

i figured this is the best place to write it if any, before i forget. midterm critique for my painting class was yesterday, and it was so interesting. well, actually only mine was really interesting to me, even though i did find it curious that people have such different perspectives. anyhow, i found it interesting because one of my classmates thought that my nature painting reminded her of candy. and i think it was another classmate/my teacher/both who said that my music abstract painting gave the impression of playfulness/being a little whimsical or something to that effect.

anyway, when anna said "candy", i was very startled as to how someone could see that in my painting cos frankly i just thought it was a bunch of flowers and leaves! anyway, somehow "candy" made me think back to thanksgiving when we were in islands of adventure and daryl said he thought i would like dr seuss land - which i really did, cos it had pastel colors and cute kiddy characters. and then i started wondering about how personality gets reflected in painting... or art. very curious. i must ask other people what they see...

this negotiation class is a little bit tough... no actually both this and the creativity class are hard to apply. as in, i can theoretically understand how the concepts work and all that, but putting it into practice is so SO difficult. and analyzing my behavior (for negotiation)... augh! maybe i'm just being lazy though.

but at the same point it is so funny how i've done so much similar stuff in SEALNet. or at least, the professional mentors talked to us about active listening, using "I feel.. " instead of "you are (doing something to me)" because you can't refute the first one but you can for the second... there are just so many things it's so weird! and then i also found out that kevin used this game that my creativity prof came up with. anyway, it's just so interesting, the overlap.

i'm just so ridiculously excited i had to post!

so i took an MS&E class last quarter, and i thought the prof had very unorthodox ways of doing things. and is also very invested in his students. so i figured, since my two advisors weren't particularly helpful (they're very academic), i should go ask him for help. so i met him once on wed and was supposed to meet him today to talk about this... in which i was sitting around trying to figure out what other class i could take to fit in my schedule and get to a full workload (i have decided that i can't slack cos if i do i'll just totally slack off, last quarter was a disaster).

and then i see the TA for that class waiting for the prof too. so i said hi and everything... and then we're waiting for him and i'm trying to find classes. so prof finally arrives (1/2hr late, i might add) and he talks to the TA first. apparently the class is too big and they need a third TA. so... after a bit he comes over and is like "what're you doing?" and decides i'm a candidate for the job. haha.

so i have an offer to be a quarter-time course assistant. i don't think i could handle 1/2time. anyway.. yup. and i came back and was telling CS online and then he informed me i needed to have >180 units and i promptly freaked out! and then i checked my unofficial transcript.. praise God, I have -drumroll- ... 181 units! isn't that crazy???? first, i'm trying to find something to fill my time and i get a job (which pays, i hope they pay me well :p). and then i have JUST enough units to allow me to do this. God is amazing.

also, side note of praise report: i'm taking 4 main classes this quarter, 3 of which have restricted enrollment and which I got into!!! by His grace, of course :) it's really crazy. i already love my classes this quarter. haha. creativity, negotiation (according to kevin, is the "mother of all classes"), painting and econ of education. and at the same time i'm still wondering if this CA thing will go through. but I have faith.

oh, and i applied for my OPT anyway. dewen said that takes a lot of faith. acting before i know for sure that i have a job. i'm sure he phrased it differently but well, you get the point. i was kinda surprised cos i was thinking more like i'm covering all my bases... we'll see.

yay i finished one final! i thought it was slightly disastrous though. it was kinda funny actually cos i was sitting behind this girl i know from class and she was just writing pages and pages and pages! whereas i had enough stuff to fill three pages and that was it. granted, her handwriting was bigger. but still... anyway, so after the exam she was like oh i wrote the outline at like 2:30pm today (the final was at 7pm). me: -gape-. haha.

anyway this whole thing about jobs and blah is getting to me again. why why why does this scenario have to repeat itself... didn't i already go through this last year. why is it so difficult? yeah i'm just whining. and then i also realized i'm not really leading stuff this year. just cos i don't want to. why do i have to do things cos i think other people want to see it on my resume? or at least that's what it feels like. i feel like i have to lead something to put on my resume. but then i also don't want to be leading this year anyhow. and i've already done the latter so i suppose the former didn't actually matter that much. -shrug- weird moods.

i really want to believe Jer 29:11-14. which is incidentally from a rather interesting source... but when there's nothing in sight and just a bunch of worries it's so hard! anyhow here's the verse:
11 "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you," declares the LORD, "and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile."
it's such a beautiful promise. but i have to admit i am lacking faith at this point. for a bit. not that i'm doing anything about it on my own either. aiyah. so messed up!

amazing healing experience. !!!

i think i was almost delirious last night man. so... i was quite sleep deprived as it was, and then wasn't feeling so great, had dinner @ Lindsey's (I think I reaelly shouldn't have had brownie/curry) and then came back and I was like okay... i need a Jamba Juice. my psychological crutch for getting well. Coldbuster w antioxidant boost! Anyhow it didn't really help, ate an orange and gargled some warm salt water (i had a scratchy throat since the morning)

was trying to do my econ problem set but just wasn't really functioning so decided to go to bed (it's 1am+). at this point i'm really desperate cos i have a presentation at 8am and the pset due at 3pm (well, 1pm if i was going to go for class) and really can't afford to be sick. so i wake up at 4.45am (after tossing and turning and having nightmares about my presentation - really! i wasn't even going to be the one presenting, don't know why i was so stressed out about it) and i'm feeling terribly hot and feverish. so wet towel, wipe myself. at 6am i wake up and the fever's gone! Praise God. I was like this is a frickin miracle. although granted I still had a headache at some points today...

alright bed time. oww.

sighh. i shouldn't have left my bag unattended cos the cap of my water bottle came off as i just left it on the couch and people were sitting on it or something.. anyhow my phone got drowned and i am desperately trying to save it [and it is SUCH bad timing too cos i was trying to figure out where Daryl was since he's leaving tmr]. at least it survived for a while.

so, according to google's many sources, i should try putting it in rice (desiccant) overnight. so my phone is right now sitting in rice and i REALLY hope it will work fine tmr. ack. this is a terrible time for a wonky phone...

and here's something quoteworthy:

"Tricks like leaving your phone in a bowl of dry rice will help to expedite moisture evaporation. They might also have side effects like getting rice in your phone."
==> http://dailyknowhow.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/save-a-wet-cell-phone/

isn't that priceless? at least i still can laugh. haha.

update:
oh dear me. my phone really does have rice in it. -horror- i can hear the grains rattling around inside! i wonder if having rice remnants is better than having water. i suppose so huh O.o [selected transcripts of my gchat conversation w jackie]

sigh. i don't even know what's wrong with me! i finished my paper (in the nick of time and wasn't that fantastic), went to cirque (which was fun, but somehow i was slightly preoccupied.. i guess it was somewhat because i was like aahh this is not a front view but a side view. but i loved the trickster's style. haha.) had dinner, came back and went to lisa's to worship and pray. and decided i would come back alone.

i really don't know what it is... so impatient and basically getting annoyed at everyone now. why the heck does everyone ask me if i'm smoking pot or something cos i had "puff the magic dragon" on my gchat?! it was just for fun cos it sounded amusing.. and it's a song isn't it. -_- don't know why i'm so touchy right now. aiyahh.

i suppose the prospect of the ENTIRE afternoon tomorrow devoted to GEM is not a particularly exciting one. esp when i need to settle so much other stuff.. or so it feels. bah.

anyway. bed.

i'm sitting here waiting for the silly SLAC bus to come. it's late! anyway, jackie needs help with her dress (which, in my opinion, is a rather scandalous dress) and so...

i'm so thankful that my STP grade (i.e. the 15 page paper that i didn't really start writing till the week it was due) was pretty good, considering. praise God! :) and apparently He also seems to be telling me that either 1. my resume is good but my interviewing skills suck cos i have not gotten any second rounds whatsoever [sigh] or 2. i should go find something other than consulting to do. oh, or 3. the job market is bad and it's nobody's fault. welllll. -_-

anyway i'm rethinking my MS&E coterm because these people are such intense competitive people [or so i assume?] and i'm just like i don't really care that much about beating the competition... and business stuff is such BS sometimes. this class is interesting (sometimes) but after talking to Daryl.. maybe i should just graduate early, save some money and do something else.

more to come later, attempting to go try to catch the bus. aha.

i guess the good coming out of this whole interviewing fiasco is i know i can act in some situations, at least. two of my interviewers said i had good energy. and if you know me, energy is not really a word you would use to characterize me most of the time. haha.

i don't even feel like complaining anymore. oh well. i was in a really bad mood in class though. as usual. i hate my classes so much of the time and just want to leave.. maybe this is just a bad week or something. i don't know. ohhhh i know. it's the horrible weather. rain and wind and cold... man.

wow. it's funny how little decisions can make such a difference. so after church lisa said they were going back to her place to pray. and then i was looking at my watch and thinking, i have so many meetings today and i need to prep for interviews and one of the later meetings, can i really afford the time? and then I thought about it and I decided time is given by God, if I don't give it to Him He could very well just take it away...

anyway, I found out so much about other people. everyone's having a hard time with various things, and I wouldn't have known otherwise. Anyway it was very comforting to pray with the rest, and Dewen gave us a lot of words. okay that sounds kinda silly. But I think it was really what I needed to hear, esp cos of the whole -why-aren't-i-more-comfortable-with-being-outspoken- crap I've been going through last week with the GEM class..

So here's the verse:
2 Cor 12:9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

His power is made perfect in my weakness. That is powerful..

i wish i didn't have to do anything... haha. that makes no sense whatsoever. no it does. i'm just lazy. homework, internship-interview prep, ECA stuff.. i'm just so tired! i don't want to do anything! why does everyone have to DO stuff here? jackie would probably resonate with me on this huh. maybe i've just wasted too much time shopping on my to-be-reimbursed stuff and blah... this is so stupid.

internship stuff is stressful when my roommate is going for the same jobs as i am. sometimes i can see it in perspective and sometimes i really can't. anyway it's just like i go for these session things and see a whole lot of people i know and i know they're also going to be the people i'm competing with for a JOB. ugh.

homework, i just don't feel like doing. and seriously, those two guys on my team talk SO much it's so difficult to get a word in edgewise. i wonder if L gets frustrated with them. it's not that they don't have good ideas, they definitely do. but other people have things to say too yeah... half the time it's like they're having their own private conversation so the rest of us will just talk about something else. but L is good at like organizing the entire group though, got to hand it to her. and S is interesting, sometimes he's just saying totally unrelated things (well, unrelated to what we're talking about). but maybe i do that sometimes and i just don't realize either.

ECA stuff... i don't know man. somehow when SEALNet emails come in i never feel like responding to them. oops. tu would probably kill me.

next week is going to be hell with all these interview things. i am just slightly terrified and my trust in God seems to have disappeared....

okay so since serene's complaining, i will blog. given that i am, as usual, procrastinating. i really don't understand this. i'm taking 3 academic classes and 1 dance class (and hardly doing the reading for the academic classes) and still not really coping as usual... this ms&e class is hard. and i feel like i'm not even contributing very much to my group cos the guys are so talkative and dominate everything. and also, i have not yet said anything in class, which is kind of a problem... ack.

oh! i must tell my XA retreat story. so i originally was considering not going, cos with my flooded (now newly renovated) room and all that, i could've used the weekend to buy all my replacement stuff... and do internship apps. it's thursday 3am+ and i'm still not decided (and i got back late cos i had a meeting, and then ended up hanging out at jh's and seihout's place w di and tu. anyway i ended up asking kevin if i should go. and listed like four reasons that i'd be better off sticking around here. and then i was telling him that it's charismatic (but clare recommended that i go anyway) and ... in the end i realized i forgot why i signed up early in the first place. and "retreats are supposed to be good for you". i don't know why that stuck. anyway i decided to go, and it was a terribly unproductive long weekend in terms of schoolwork (i had such great ambitions), but God-wise it was great!

the first night the pastor delivered this message about hosea and his unfaithful wife. likened to God and us, his people, turning away from him again and again. i never thought of it in that light.. anyway, lots of questions. but renewed God-focus, which hopefully I am able to keep. the XA Stanislaus/UC Merced worship team was pretty awesome, even if they had slightly weird songs ("i have the best dad in the whole world" and "heaven meets earth with a sloppy wet kiss"). haha. and all the XA pastors are so gifted in the art of speaking! and very humorous. i sat there thinking.. if the pastoring thing doesn't work out, they can all go be standup comedians.

here're some links for fun... he is now one of my favorite comedic people.
http://www.the-ormes.com/cat.htm
http://www.the-ormes.com/oxygen.htm

yeah, now i have to go find myself a good pillow tomorrow. and decide if i should return my current comforter and body pillow. both of which i'm pretty happy with but my mom is convinced i should get a better one. sighhh.

wonder if anyone still reads this. it's been a month! wow.

anyway, crazy europe trip! i didn't understand why cheukka only wanted to travel for a week or 10 days at most, but now i do. it is tiring to not have a real home for too long. and the irony of it all... while i'm thinking of a room to come back to, the storm is busy wrecking it. well, not exactly, since the storm happened like 5th jan or something, pretty near the end of my trip.

i'm glad i got to see so many places though! we had some hilarious times... i still need to type out those quotes. and i don't know if not bringing my macbook along was a good idea or not. i guess i'm glad i didn't have to carry it around cos it IS kind of heavy.. but i could've done my resume stuff and all that. maybe.

so.. london. it was cold. and i don't really remember what i thought of it. maybe big cities just don't have as well-defined characters? or maybe we didn't do enough walking around to get a sense... took a lot of tubes. haha. while poor tracy was trying to keep warm. anyhow, cheukka met us at the airport! phew:p and got to meet kahli one of the days, which was fun too.

rome. been there, it was fun going thru the market and i was so tempted to buy lychees/clementines! lychees reminded me a LOT of vietnam and PV07... and the discovery that we should google good places to eat instead of settling for crappy food wherever we happen to find it. i don't even know why food has become that important, it must be jackie's fault :p

florence. i don't know why but it looked like what i thought prague would look like! the architecture of the church and the dull colors... prague was so not like that. oh well. nice quaint little town. and when i say little, i mean little. i'm still wondering where the stanford in florence campus was. but i was always fascinated with the word "firenze" and am glad i finally found out it's florence. haha.

venice. always wanted to go see! sea-town always fascinated me. pity we arrived in crappy weather (cloudy and cold), but thankfully it cleared up (sunny but still cold). the idea of boats as "buses" is so novel (to me, anyway) and refreshingly different. it takes forever to get to places though, sometimes i just wish we had a speedboat. being near the sea is lovely though, always liked water. very peaceful.

paris. been there too, but now i actually knew where i was (navigating) and that's a nice feeling to have. as opposed to just following people around... and now i can speak! kind of. haha. and i love patisseries. although i think i unfortunately ate too many sweet things. ooh, met liangsi and yanghan and qinghan and kevin! that was fun. yanghan looks a little different from what i remembered from JC... and when i saw qinghan i was like hmm she looks slightly familiar. then when she introduced i was like oh! ... haha. cool. and kevin looks so much like jipson, i don't even know why. well ok maybe not THAT much, but somehow or other.

prague. yayyyy i finally got to meet ting after 2 years! maybe 3. hm. and her boyfriend. haha. they're so cute. we had a lot of fun times though, despite freezing. and i got to go shopping on my own for one day, which was nice... anyway it was a pity serene wasn't there, would've been even funnier i think.

back to london, where i try to figure out what i'm doing on 6 jan. so i was supposed to have lunch with tapiwa and then shop... but he gave me the wrong phone no. and so while i was trying to figure out wat his no. was, hk and jiahui persuaded me to go down to cambridge. i guess it was hk saying that it would be nice for me to come when people are there to show me around that clinched it. since my whole point of coming to europe this year was to see people before they graduate. pity i didn't manage to see aud/puee/yunlei. silly pple. anyway, cambridge is so pretty. i guess it's more landscaped than stanford... and i got to play a pipe organ! wish i knew more about how it worked.. and i should play piano more often. haiyah.

so... sat is my disaster night. when i realize i forgot to pay my credit card bill, and i see this email w subject "flood damage to room 211" and at first i'm like is that spam.. then i realized that IS my room number so i'd better read it. at first i'm like is this a joke... such a horror.

anyway the long and short of it is that there were huge storms in northern california on 5 jan (i think, or maybe 4th?) and water clogged up the drainage pipes on the 3rd floor balcony, which is directly above my room. so.. the water seeped through the ceiling, collected on the floor, and seeped through the carpet. thereby destroying all our bedding (which they sent to laundry but i am most certainly not accepting the laundered stuff) and various other things.

spent most of this week packing up and moving in, my boxes are still in such disarray and i've been so bad with emails and things. it's sad how i can't really get stuff done unless i have a to-do list. else i just get distracted and forget things and blah.

having hell deciding what to claim and all that... and buying stuff this weekend at heavenly.. man. such a pain that i almost hate snowboarding, which would be terribly sad since i now have a new board. but i hope stuff works out.