hakuna matata

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.