hakuna matata

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.