Friday worship leading was a huge fluster. Was delayed in camp and consequently arrived late, and rooms were not opened and keys were not readily available and we couldn't find some equipment. And the songs were entirely changed by me just the night before! But thank God everything got settled eventually, practice was like 20 minutes only and it didn't go too bad! And I had to leave for camp the very next hour because of the Saturday confinement. Okayy I've learnt my lesson I'll go for every single 5BX every morning, even during reservist! Sunday morning got out from camp, and it was another mad rush down to church for worship practice! Once again it's an enormous confirmation to me when everything fell nicely into place and how God's really working his message in mysterious ways. After service was meeting over lunch for games day at Bishan Park, then went back to church for guitar lessons! Ming Ren has got totally different approaches towards beginner guitaring, and he snatched away Marcus and taught him different things! Don't worry Sam and Celine will be quicker and better learners under my tutorage! Hahaha. Then Rachel and Ming Ren and I went to Bishan Park with the intention of checking out what we can plan for games, but we gave up shortly and went to eat dessert across the road instead! And it was a long long long walk back to church hahaha we wanted to take taxi but the distance is so short that the meter probably wouldn't even jump.

It's been a terribly busy weekend and it caused me to be worried over so many things. I'm so glad it's over! Rushing to camp and rushing to church or to go home, and the taxi and bus fares I've racked up aren't cheap okay! My expenses for November has been sky-high (largely because of new guitar haha), and that's not a good thing because I realised I'm being very lax with money! Like, haiya just spend la, or don't need to pay back la, or I treat you la, because I've already spent so much money this month! And I've shuttled between home and church and home and church so many times this weekend that I'm abit sick of it okay! Yeah it's convenient because it's one block away, and I can easily go home to get my guitar, or put it back, or keep the laundry, or change, or whatever. But it's been dizzying.

In any sense, I'm thankful that I still enjoyed peace and quietness even though I've been rushing so much. Thanks to all those encouragements from sympathetic friends while I was confined too!

I'm getting confined in camp this Saturday, together with a few others from my platoon. Hahaha we overslept and didn't go for morning exercise. I think it's quite hilarious because of the reason, and after this confinement, I've basically served all kinds of punishments the Army can dish out! Sign extra, SOL charge, confinement, early book-ins. The only thing left is detention. I'm some poster boy for soldier delinquency. But the most fortunate thing was, it was supposed to be Saturday and Sunday confinement. And that would be trouble because I'm leading worship on Sunday! So much for wanting to go SITEX or wherever hahaha.

Okay laa it was a really bad day today. I changed all my songs for Friday worship in a fit of anger. I don't like last minute things! I think there's a huge problem with priority and responsibility and making certain arrangements when you can't be there. Raahh. But I'm guilty too, because I changed all the songs last minute!

Khairul I hope you're reading this: YOU'RE STILL CHARMING BOY IN MY EYES EVEN IF ALL THE EFFORTS DIDN'T PAY OFF!

This is 700th post!

I just found more things that I can be doing this weekend! SITEX is on at Expo! And Integrity Music is having warehouse sale at Kallang! Haha the Integrity one is courtesy of Celine's mum who gave me the information last week. But I think it's going to be mightily crazy again I want to have enough sleep and rest!

There's a half day off today, and I travelled from my camp to Changi Airport to see my parents off. They're going Malaysia for some relatives' wedding or something. Going airport is always the end of the world for me hahaha the journey is so long!

I feel like I have a heavier responsibility with my own life now. Like what I want to do with the years that are ahead of me, how I should be living it, how I have to try and be more like Jesus, blah blah. Hehh it happens every year, and thinking back now, I'm kinda glad to say that the whole of this year has been pretty fulfilling and memorably well-spent. Okay this is the kind of thing I should be blogging about on the last day of this year, so I shall save it.

Your birthday is your one day in the year where people try and make you happy, and you're generally allowed to do whatever you want with your life. But it's also just another day in your life. I kinda regret not spending it with my mother instead. I'm disappointed that NOBODY remembered Buttercup cake too, after I told the whole world I want it!! Never mind I'll get my own next year (: (: (:

I've got a new guitar!! Went guitar shopping with Yicheng and Luke yesterday, and after shuttling between Bras Basah and Peninsula Plaza and Peace Centre and back to Peninsula, I finally found one which sounded really good to me. Acoustic with plug-in, Singaporean brand called Maestro! Short of breaking my bank account, I think the catching up with Yich and Luke was more valuable because I've barely met them for the last two years.

And today was another Sunday spent totally in church. Worship practice in the morning, then after service there was a worship leaders meeting over lunch, then went back to church to practice for end-of-year combined, and after that ended I was waiting for Samantha and Celine and Marcus to arrive cos I'm teaching them guitar! Wow it was a huge torture hahaha they are all so easily distracted! And I have a bad sore throat now from singing and talking a lot all day.

It's been a really busy weekend. So many meetings and practices, and I barely have time to do the stuff I wanna do. Next week's crazier! Friday Sunday leading worship!

Before the clock strikes midnight and hence it's still my birthday!! It didn't go very well because there was a last-minute guard duty addition, and my name was in it for Thursday! So my first eight hours of birthday was stuck at my camp's main gate, then I rested to compensate for my lack of sleep, and by the time I got out of camp, half the day was gone!

But there was a celebration. During cell group, Shermin popped out in the darkness with a cake full of M&M's. I've got really nice presents/cards from Celine and Samantha. Hahaha by the way I'm as old as Samantha's guitar! And Khairul wrote me the best card. He's overseas now but he prepared in advance my card and presents not meant for me, which I had to navigate through his maze of blocks and I still have to navigate through another foreseeable maze!

And thanks to all the wishes and handshakes and SMSes and Facebook posts and smiles. If I inadvertently said "Happy Birthday" back to you, that's because I keep thinking this is like Christmas and someone goes "Merry Christmas" and you reply back the same thing, and it's the like.

Some pictures stolen from Shermin's blog.

Oh my gosh I can sort of understand the uproar caused when Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita was published! But I like the prose and the narrative style. Distinct, fresh, sarcastic, lucid, frank, and funny. The occasional French is lost on me, but the debaucheries are stark and audacious! Horrible!

November's been really crazy so far, and it didn't help when October flew by so quickly! I always find that the months in the end of the year pass by much quicker than at the start. But November is a busy busy month!

Friday and Sunday duty right after returning from Hong Kong! I'm still stuck in holiday mood hahaha so I don't really care that my weekend's kinda spent. Went for high tea buffet with Mark and Alicia and Adriel and Yurong and Joel today. Then Alicia gave me a ride to Pasir Ris cos she was heading there for work, and I had to collect something. Then it was a long bus ride back to Bishan for singing practice.

And I finally received a letter from Priya, my adopted Bangladeshi kid!

Okay. Time to go. I'm all psyched up.

Back from Hong Kong! Zonal conference about Salvation Army officership. Somehow I didn't really know what to expect because everything's so vague initially! But it was a really good time of sharing, learning, and re-dedication. The shortcomings weren't isolated, and it was very "reassuring" to know about similar concerns. Spent most of the time with Yvonne, Kar Leong, Jimi and Rose, and Michelle from Malaysia territory. Met other delegates and candidates from Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the officers who were facilitating. It's times like these that I wished I had a better command of languages! I can't say for Korean or Tagalog, but I studied Japanese for two years and my dialect's Cantonese and Atiqah did teach me quite a fair bit of Malay! I'm stuttering isolated phrases that make no sense and the best thing is I understand some Cantonese but I can't speak it.

Ate a lot too! Gosh I was never hungry over there. Hotel buffet is overwhelming and we go out for supper almost every night and we still gouge on nice food. Got to visit the city too, went up the Peak, beautiful skyline by the Stars Avenue.

More pictures HERE.

Coldplay's song Fix You is a nice song. Happened to chance upon their live concert video (Glastonbury 2005) on Zheng Cong's media player, and it's got me, well, literally, fixed! I finally understand Mark's concept of "hair-raising" music! I've always had a stronger inclination towards the acoustic guitar when it comes to new songs, and I would listen out for its parts and try to figure out the chords and the strumming pattern and blah blah. But of late, it's slowly growing to involve the electric guitars too. I still prefer the bright, lively and somewhat acerbic tones of acoustic strings, but I realised that I'm beginning to like the twanging sounds of the electric effects too. And the way Coldplay did it, it imploded quietly within and enveloped me right in. I like the repeated guitar riff and how they build it from there into a smorgasbord of melodies that sounds simply awesome! I can't place the feelings right, the evocations are quite ineffable and indescribable. Forgive the language, but another female friend put it across quite aptly: good music is orgasmic.

Also included in the viewings on the same media player, are several movies! I've watched She's The Man, Hitch, Beauty and the Beast, and Mulan. Yeah I know Beauty and the Beast doesn't quite sit in the list as something for a guy, but it's nice okaay!! Timeless and classic.

Alrighty. Late night supper/dessert with Dezmand just now, then hung around at corps talking to security guard. I still have to answer some emails, and I haven't packed finish all my stuff yet!! Will be away in Hong Kong from tomorrow till next Thursday.

Butterflies has always been my favourite motif of ephemeral beauty and fragility. Most of them don't even put in a gramme on the weighing scale, and their wings are thinner than paper. Sensitive to light and temperatures too, so you can build a butterfly garden full of butterfly-attracting plants, but you might not always see them. I always think that they are the pushovers of the insect kingdom! Like, what's the use of being pretty and bright when you're so delicate?

But I still like them. It's quite a sight to see a butterfly fluttering in midair, because they always look like they are in perpetual suspension at any moment. Unlike birds, butterflies are so much more erratic and graceful when it comes to flight.

This is a meaningless trivia, but the word "butterfly" came from the term "fluttering by".

My Sunday today capped a nice end to a horrible October and busy days and all my sadness. Led worship, and I'm so glad Ben could make it today, because the alternative will be me playing and singing again! And leaders' meeting after service was quick and prim. But I said something wrong that was contrary to what I've been believing all along! I said we as humans are above the nature that God created because He meant for us to have ruling over the animals and dominion with the mountains and seas and trees and skies. Okay the ruling and dominion bits are kinda sound, but I don't think we're above nature! I think nature is larger than us. It is God's way of telling us why we do not just exist, but we are living for a purpose, because there is something out there bigger than our self-important lives. And this devotion came in my email this afternoon: It's about Jesus. The focus isn't on us and on our achievements, and God's salvation gift isn't something that we deserve. While it's still true that God wants a personal relationship with each of us, it's not about us at all. We need to seek His kingdom and His righteousness, and I think that's where true worship stems. That's why I am amazed at how God has names for every star in the sky, He created ecosystems that self-sustains, each species of flora and fauna with distinct descriptions and characteristics and everything. When I think nature, I think we should bow down to honour God in reverence, and it shouldn't be me rising above all of these magnificent creation. Not about me not about me not about me!

All my years in church and since I was at a very young age, I always thought that being a worship leader is one of the easiest appointments that you can pick up. Even when I started leading worship myself, I seriously thought what's so difficult about this, just sing laa. Okay granted that I didn't get a lot of help in that aspect, and my biggest worries at that time were stage frights and whether I could sustain half the tune that I needed to sing. And I think that's why a lot of times I forget that being a worship leader is very much a priestly and pastoral position. Sure, the job scope is as literal as it can get. Choose songs, lead the band, then lead the congregation. But it goes much more than that. It's not just the songs I choose or the music I want. There's a gigantic responsibility on guiding people to worship God for who He is, to focus on Him through the music, to offer everything to Him in sacrifice.

I find the last requirement the hardest. I mean, I can go on and on about how leading worship has helped me to depend on God more and it makes seeking and praising Him a lot easier. But I don't know how far I fail when it comes to the actual sacrifice. If I want to make every worship session a pleasing offering to God, I think the first step is to offer myself first because I'm supposed to be the leader, right? And I find it hard, because I know best the state of depravity I'm in and it's nowhere required of the obedience that God wants from me. I don't think it's just a matter of being on stage and singing the songs for half an hour, then step off and look forward to the next time I'm scheduled. There was a point of time when I realised that it has nothing to do with the songs and practices that defines me as a worship leader, it's the the way I lead my life and doing the stuff that God expects me to do. It's all the in-betweens that determines the sacrifice, and it's not even remotely related to choosing songs to sing.

At which point did I discover that I was relying too much on my own capabilities and taking God for granted because I'm too engrossed in myself? Since the start of this year I've been going "it's like that laaa" more times than I can remember. I can spend a million hours learning a song on my guitar, I can tear my hair out over songs arrangement alone, I can listen to a song on repeat for days, but I like to think that no matter how much I try and perfect it, everything's still out of my hands. There's always something bigger than what I'm going through, and God is still God, He won't change and won't stop loving me even if I reject His ways. And sometimes I seriously wonder whether I should continue being so meticulous and fastidious and perfectionistic, because I still stumble once in a while and things don't look/sound the way I want it. All of these, and I haven't even thought about dealing with people and emotions and dynamics and comments and critcisms.

We worship God because He wants us to, and because we need to. It directs us to focus on His sovereignty and excellency and majesty. And being in worship ministry means to be an aid for people to seek God in this manner through music. It's not about skills or capabilities, it's being assured and confident of God working through us through our giftings, and being joyful in praising Him, and seeking Him first before everything else with a heart of worship. Not about suiting our agenda, not about singing the songs we want to sing, not about singing the songs the congregation wants to sing.


I'm being really stupid.

I don't know what I want and I'm discouraged by a lot of things and I'm tired of staying the same old instead of moving forward to somewhere. Okay so last night was bad because I sang and played horribly for worship despite spending five million times trying to play Stronger in the actual 3/4 beat, but I forgot and did it in my own rhythm instead. Oh my gosh why did I bother to practice in the first place. And I feel so bedraggled, like I just walked out from the sea pulling a bunch of seaweed and all the flotsam and jetsam stuck in it. Aarghh how am I going to survive through like that!!

I have a bad sore throat and I still have worship practice later and worship leading tomorrow. Okay I sort of killed myself by going for prata at Jalan Kayu with the guys after church last night. Fattening and throat-destroyer and it made me feel as if I have to book in to camp!

I know I'm being childish and stupid, but I just don't feel like it. I have to deal with my own insecurities first. And, I remember how all my JC friends keep asking me whether I'm still in frivolous flirtings and tumultuous relationships, that I realised that how much I've grown from all those mistakes. So when I hear of people telling me problems with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I'm like yar yar yar I went through that crap before. No such trouble at all this entire year!! This is an achievement.