Just Another Blog Out There

I'm privileged to be able to lead a missions team up to Malaysia coming this weekend. However, there are a lot loose ends to be tied up and I'm hitting a peak season in my work. Moreover, I'm not really prepared—both spiritually and mentally. The last thing I want to feel is to have no compassion towards the people I am serving...then what would be the purpose of going for the trip?

Help me hear your heartbeat towards your people, God.

Supper time!

Last week I went out with supper with my hall friends, and this whole supper outing turned out to be a blooper.

The people from the east side were supposed to meet us northerners for supper at Thomson, and the original plan was that Huayang and Shen Jau are the two drivers to pick the rest of us northerners. However, HY didn't managed to secure his father's car, and therefore all the pick-ups were done by SJ. So SJ had to make loops to pick me and HY up, and then drive all the way to Marsiling to pick Dong and Shaowen up.

We're 15 minutes late.

We managed to pick Dong up, and SW is supposed to be with him. Lo and behold, he's enjoying himself somewhere in Sembawang with his other group of friends. So SJ had to make his way down to Sembawang to pick SW up. And his van is running low on fuel, and needed to be refilled within the next 10 km.

We're 30 minutes late.

Therefore, out of consideration for the easterners, we decided to spilt up for supper instead of making them wait for us. It's another 30 minutes to pick SW up and to refill the van and to drive all the way down to Thomson.

And so we called them, telling them to go on to have supper by themselves. Thanks to mis-communication, I think they took it that we find it a hassle having to drive down to meet them and therefore decide to have supper by ourselves instead.

And so they got angry and went back to the east side to have supper instead. The northerners received our fair share of bombardment from them, although I don't blame them for reacting this way. I would have too.

And so we ended up in some kopitiam in Sembawang and, over supper, trying to dissect what had happened, and listening to Dong's adventurous tales of his Cambodia/Thailand trip. Interesting.

What a blooper.

I've been listening to "Just Can't Get Enough" by New Radicals over and over again for the last one month of so. Catchy beat, cool tune. It catches in my head but everytime I hear the song, it's like hearing it for the first time.

I did a Google search for the song lyrics, and I got some surprises. Firstly, the full name of the song is "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough", and some parts of the lyrics that I though were just "ahh-ohh" were actually words:

We got a feeling
We got a feeling
We get a feeling
Like we could die
Mother
We just can't get enough
We just can't get enough
Lover
We just gotta get it up
We just gotta get it up

Also, sifting through the Google results made me suspect that I'm having a "clean" version of the song; the numerous copy of the lyrics online had a stanza that just wasn't in the version I am listening to, and a line that contained the f-word was replaced with what sounds like latin-american gibberish.

Of course, the only other plausible reason was that someone had done up a wrong version, and that "wrong" version propagated throughout the Web. Hmm...

I had a strange dream last week. In a person's lifetime, there will be some dreams that you'll never forgot for one reason or another, especially when strong feelings are attached to it. I may 'forget' a dream, but remember it when it comes back again in my sleep...a sense of deja vu.

Anyway, it's a sad dream, because I remember the moments before I woke up from the dream was that I was weeping, looking at the devastation of my home and my neighborhood because of an earthquake. Yeah, earthquake in Singapore. (Most dreams don't fit the usual logic and reason of the conscious.) I was back home trying to recover my things that were strewn around the room because of the earthquake. The room is in a mess and it's the kind of scene you see on TV.

Most dreams that I remember are sad dreams. Don't really remember if I had any happy dreams, though. I don't have dreams like scoring 100% for my exams or winning a lucky draw or coming in champion in a sports game. Funny. Those sad dreams are probably some appendix of my consciousness trying to get in touch with my feelings.

It's really freaking hot this period of the year, where the sun goes full blast and the whole nation feels like an oven. Went out for a shoot outing/catching up with Kenneth today, and I took the above photo at (where else?) Bugis Junction after we parted company. I've not caught up with Kenneth since my graduation, so it was great time just chit-chatting and cracking silly jokes.

During the course of catching up the issue of finding a permanent job popped up now and then. Such subjects usually revolve around the core issue of financial subsistence, and frankly, my current job doesn't pay that much. Well, just enough for living expenses, but I can always do with more money. :)

In retrospect, after being in this job for quite some time now, I'll probably not have stuck with this job if I were to be in for the money. It's difficult for me to explain the learning and satisfaction I get out of what I'm doing now, since such things are intangible and therefore hard to put down in quantitative terms. However, I do know that I cannot "survive" on this job for long and there will be a time where I will have to move on, granted the fact that God has blessed me with the education and talent I possess.

I find this is a time where God is teaching me to be a good steward of money. With the little I have, I need to work out priorities on where to put my money. Not that I am doing a perfect job of managing my finances now, but I am now beginning to be more mindful on where I spend.