9 years old, you were never around.
then, you chose not to be around.
10 years later, you are still never around.
now, I choose to not be around you.
9 years old, I was naive and misunderstood.
9 years old, I was the scorn in your eyes, the root of your perceived problems
9 years old, I thought what a life I had... an unfortunate one I said, softly to myself.
10 years later, I am independent and understanding.
10 years later, you became a meaningless subject, a passing topic.
10 years later, I think what a life I am living... a somewhat unfortunate one...perhaps.
what happened to my alacrity towards life, hope and all things optimistic?
what happened to that zest for the uncertainties of life?
what ever happened to all that fervour...the same exact fervour that made me who I am today.
puzzled - when it first happened
despondent - when it finally happened
fearful - after it finally happened
self-reproach - the beginning of after it finally happened
nonchalant - the today of after it finally happened
much is to be said about how you entered and left my life
your physical being may still hover around,
yet I find myself void of an emotional attachment to you.
shy
reserved
quiet
introverted
words people use to describe me.
words synonymous to me.
filled with love
engaging
optimistic
open
words I want people to use to describe me.
words that are antithetical to me.
as time passes,
wounds of the past will heal,
hopes of reconciliation will blossom,
broken relationships will rekindle.
perhaps I just happen to be the thorn among the roses of hope and healing.
perhaps that's why I hesitate when I want to embrace a relationship - the diffidence in me
perhaps that's why I feel alone and in solitude - the lonesome nights
perhaps the past still haunts me...even till today despite everything else - in spite of nonchalant
grateful - for the peace I have now
thankful - for the better and more fruitful life I am living in now
--- dedicated from me to you, you a figure that entered my life nineteen years ago...
You like to be surrounded by four solid walls.
You are a shy, idealistic person who does not find it easy to have relationships, especially intimate ones.
You are diplomatic, objective, and live in the present.
You are not very reserved, impatient, self-confident and fond of action.
You are self-confident and like to bring attention to yourself.
http://handwriting.feedbucket.com/
Did a handwriting analysis today. Quite interesting though. True? False? Let's leave this open!
"Why are we embarrassed by silence?"
"What comfort do we find in all the noise?" [Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom]
When people meet for the first time often times, we find ourselves too stumped for words. The initial reluctance, hesitation and of course, shyness will indeed make conversation a little awkward at first. Often times, we rely on people who are more vocal, more out-going, more daring enough to make that first move however the consequences. Difficult but important.
In silence, do we think about where this conversation will head next or are we trying too hard to read the mind of the other party to sieve out whether he or she is thinking about something else other than the actual conversation. Sometimes, we try too hard.
This not only happens when we meet people for the first time.
In festivities and celebrations, do you believe in following aimlessly with the crowd or would you prefer to do what you really want to do or maybe even both. In all this merry-making that is happening, take some time and think about what all these moments of trill and joy really mean to you. Ask yourself it's significance and perhaps then, these moments would appear more meaningful to you.
This only happens when we are true to ourselves.
--till later--
I had a Lo Hei yesterday and it was quite interesting to see how people at ages 19 onwards can still have fun playing with their food.
Ate dinner at Mouth Restaurant at Safra Toa Payoh. Mum's POSB debit card failed on her again. The first time was when we were at Secret Recipes. After paying, Uncle Chris's car broke down. Apparently his car's battery failed to charge up the engine. A series of unfortunate events some may say. Yet, it was a blessing that in everything that went wrong, there was a right that knocked on our doors. Blessings...
I have been cleaning my house today. I can safely say that my house is relatively clean.
Chinese New Year is coming. It is the time where we once again meet our family members and relatives. People whom you must see, people you want to see, people you may want to see and people whom you don't want to even see.
To my friends, have a great Chinese New Year...
I made potato salad today. Not a very good attempt as my potatoes were only cooked on the outer surface and not on the inside. They were quite hard to bite. My hard-boiled eggs became half-boiled. How disappointing!
I had my reunion dinner last night at my maternal grandmother's house. We had steamboat, as always. Quite scrumptious, especially all the different types of mushrooms I ate...hee...
--till later--
Mark 12:30 says "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength".
God wants all of us. He wants our heart, our soul, our mind and all of our strength. The place we worship is not as important as why we worship and how much of ourselves do we offer to God when we worship.
What type of worship pleases God?
1. Accurate Worship
Worship must be based on the truth of the Scripture and not our opinions about God. To worship "in truth" means to worship God as he is truly revealed in the Bible. We cannot create a comfortable or politically correct image of God and worship it. That is idolatry.
2. Authentic Worship
Worship is your spirit communicating and thus responding to God's spirit. Worship must be genuine and heart felt. We must worship God with deep emotions and feelings in which God has given us. God wants our honest, real love. Worship must be accurate and authentic. God-pleasing worship is deeply emotional and deeply doctrinal.
Often times in church, worship is synonymous to the music sung. This is a warped perception. Real worship happens when your spirit responds to God. The best style of worship is one that must authentically represent your love for God based on the background and personality God gave us. Remember, God made all of us unique. Hence our worship towards God should also be unique. This would then essentially be an authentic worship.
However, the biggest distraction in worship is ourselves. Our interests and our worries over what others think about us. God just wants us to be ourselves.
Extracted from More than Life by Hillsong United
All Day
Verse 1:
I don't care what they say about me
It's all right, all right
I don't care they think about me
It's all right, they'll get it one day
Pre-Chorus
I love you, I'll follow you
You are my, my life
I will read my Bible and pray
I will follow you all day
Verse 2:
I don't care what it costs anymore
Cos' you gave it all and I'm following you
I don't care what it takes anymore
No matter what happens I'm going your way
------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read the lyrics to All Day
3. Thoughtful Worship
We must engage our mind when we worhsip God. That is loving God with all our mind. We must be able to think of fresh words and ways to honour God so as to avoid offering cliches in worship. Be specific. That means praise God in a manner that best reflects on the current situation.
4. Practical Worship
God wants us to live for him. However, the one thing that is hindering our worship for God is our self-centeredness. We worship God not for self-gratification or for others to see and be awed. We worship God because we truly love God with all our heart and all our mind and with all our strength.
Worship takes effort and energy. Worship is essentially a sheer act of a willing sacrifice. The heart of the matter (of worship) is a matter of the heart. How much your heart is willing to worship God defines the manner and depth of your worship for God.
Are you willing to worship God in a manner that pleases him?
----------------My personal sharing based on the book Purpose Driven life by Rick Warren with extraction from Day 13 - Worship that Pleases God.---------------
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too - even when you're in the dark. Even when you're falling."
How do you trust someone who has betrayed your trust. At what point do you stop trusting others and only choose to trust yourself.
Trust is something mutual yet it also takes courage. The choice to believe a person - his words and actions, ultimately lies in ourselves. Yet, circumstances may also sometimes force us to trust a person.
How objective then would your trust towards a person be? Where would your benchmark and parameter be? If you have one, then how much betrayal can you then condone.
When trust is misplaced, how do you want to react? How objective would you then be?
Trust is one of the core ingredient in any relationship. between a parent and a child; between friends; between couples; between a husband and a wife. The length of a relationship will ultimately depend on how much trust or faith as some might say that is present in the existing relationship. Sometimes, this trust might even lead to denial before we finally accept the truth. Sometimes, the truth hurts.
I am reading Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom and I can understand why it is a bestseller. At the very least, it allows for a functioning and thinking brain especially when you are in the army.
If given a choice of Law and Teaching, which would you pick?
If given the chance to change something in the past, just one thing, what would it be?
Often times, people are caught in a dilemma. However, more often than not, these dilemmas are a result of their own uncertainties and sometimes the misgivings of others too.
Recently, there has been much argument raised in the forum about whether teaching is a dead-end job?
To some, teaching as a career seems to be a turned-off simply because of the long hours one has to put in and the agony of having to face rebellious and uninterested students every other day. The sense of satisfaction, if there is any that is, seems to only be either on Teacher's Day where even the most infamous students in school become angels for just a day or when you finally see your students leave school.
Teaching requires a great deal of passion. It involves your heart and soul. A forgiving heart, a willing heart, a compassionate heart and an endearing heart. A persistent soul, an enduring soul and perhaps an unfortunate soul.
Some of my friends have occasionally asked me whether I regret choosing teaching over law. Some blatantly perceived it as because I have a scholarship in teaching and not in law, plus a chance to go overseas, hence I chose teaching instead. Some thought it was because I didn't make it into law school and hence I chose teaching because I didn't have a keen interest in engineering despite being a double mathematics and double science student when I was in National Junior College.
Let me set the record straight.
I have no regrets about choosing teaching over law. Yes, I was accepted into NUS Law school. Yes, I was even accepted into the law faculty of universities in United Kingdom such as London School of Economics and Political Science. Yes, I dislike engineering because I never did like Physics.
With Law, I knew what I would become. A fresh young lawyer, out there battling out in the courtrooms, ironing out facts from fiction, working long hours and most unfortunately, burnt out within the next 10 to 15 years. The market for law in Singapore is very small and limited. Let's face it, how many criminals do you actually have in Singapore everyday. How many significant corporate cases do our courts in Singapore trial every other day. Put the limited market aside, being burnt out from a career is the last thing I want to see in a career path that I now have a choice to choose. I honestly, do not wish to wake up one day when I am 30 and say to myself, I want a change in my working environment just so because I completely lost interest and passion towards what I am doing as a career.
With Teaching, that is a different story altogether. I see a career path where despite its ups and downs, I see a life rich with vibrancy and opine opportunities. I see a great career path ahead of me not entirely because of my scholarship but because of the passion I have towards teaching.
When I applied for Law at NUS, I went for the written test and interview with feigned enthusiasm as I had already by then accepted my scholarship. I thought why not just try my luck, see how it all goes and see whether I would be accepted into Law or not as since I had already paid my 10 dollars for my application. When the admission letter came, I told myself 'Not Law' but it wrote Law. I smiled to myself and then framed the letter.
To Greg, do not lose hope. A missed opportunity does not equate to an opportunity that will never come. Have faith and more importantly, have confidence!
Dead-end? Teaching? If it were, then I pity you because your education was riddled with teachers who couldn't care less about your performance as a student because they didn't even have the passion towards teaching. My condolenses. Seriously. To you, your education was already in itself dead-end.
---till later---
06 January 2006
One year ago, I enlisted into Hawk Coy in Tekong. Yes, Hawk then was the white horse-cum-scholar company. We had some privileges and we also trained as hard as other companies too. Time really does fly. Just 10 more months to ORD and maybe with some hint of luck and hope, it could even be earlier.
---to a special someone------
twenty days
to start and end
audacious we were
to light up this candle
moments of happiness
moments of comfort
moments of sorrow
moments of anger
moments of doubt
moments of tears
moments of forgiveness
moments of togetherness
moments of separation
moments...
ironic ain't it
we were already somewhat related
before we even met
however much we wanted to forgo the past
the past etched into our minds
the past ate into us
the past came back into our lives
the past...
storm clouds gather
stars collide
perhaps it was never meant to be
---to a special someone--------
2006 is finally here.
For every NS men, it means a few more months before they ORD. It means the smell of freedom is ever more closer.
For students, it means a start of a new year, a new semester, a new beginning. While some may see old friends, some may make new ones, others would still prefer to keep to themselves.
For women turning 22 and above, it's another year where you will definitely without any hint of a doubt grow older. Yes, more wrinkles, more crowheads, more strands of white hair, more... Hence Forever 21...
For every small kid, it means I have finally grown older. I am going to be a big boy or girl soon. A word of advice, don't grow up too fast. Otherwise, for girls especially, you wished you were forever 21.
For many, a new year means a new start and a fresh beginning. It also mean a brand new set of resolutions to make. Things to hope for. Things to accomplish. Things that can make 2006 different from 2005. Things that will comfort you. Things that will personify you further. Things that make you stand out with your individuality. Things.
Resolutions. Plans. People tend to plan ahead. They make a 1-month goal, a 1-year goal, 5-year goal, 10-year goal and the list goes on. Planning ahead is part of our intricate human make-up. We always plan ahead so that we can stay sober in the midst of uncertainty and most importantly know where our sense of direction is and henceforth how we ought to prioritise things. As a result of such goals that are somewhat like sapping into the crystal ball of a fortune reader, we make decisions, however forced and sometimes even warped they are, just so to keep in line with our goals or resolutions.
While some conveniently leave out the unknown 'X' in their equation for planning their goals, others choose to agree with the unknown 'X' but still cast it aside. Eventually and essentially, we are convinced of our plans. We also have this strange conviction in our lives to want to convince others of our plans or in our own words 'to just hear the opinions of others'. If the opinion is in support of our goal, then all is well. However, if the opinion is one which is shrouded with negativity and doubt, you cast it as pessimism and unwanted opinions because you know your plans and goals will definitely be realised and if your own self-faith cannot reassure you, there is always the faith of and in God.
The unknown 'X' inhibits people to venture out and bring out their audacious spirit in them. This unknown often times place an unknowing fear in a person and thereby resulting in many missed opine opportunities. This fear of the unknown is essentially uncalled for. As the old adage goes, life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get. Life is filled with its ups and downs. A placid and tranquil life, while it may seem pleasant and enticing, yet it loses out to a life filled with zest and spice where it encompasses some moments of depression and some uplifting moments as well. The humps or setbacks in our lives are the meaningful things that will either break you or make you. Essentially, these moments, both uplifting or depressing ones, will shape the character in you and will eventually bring out the person in you. It is the quality of the mould that is of the essence.
Goal-planning is inevitable. I have goals and plans that I have made. To me they are realistic ones because I know they are achievable not just by me but by others also. In all the haste and hurry to pen down your new year resolution, take time to savour the moments of 2005, take the effort to toast to the bad ones and take comfort in the good ones. A glass of wine, red or white, might just do the trick.
My goal, to put it simply, is to spend 01 January 2007 in London.
Short and sweet, isn't it? Yet, it is filled with lots of meaning.
---to my friends, have a fruitful and wonderful year ahead. stay happy always and don't forget to smile...---