These past few days were spent mostly in church studying for my exams! I only have three exams this semester but my first paper doesn't start until Saturday! Which is really really late, because my sister ENDS on Friday and I only START on Saturday. Haha the additional time to study has been really helpful though, just that I tend to procrastinate and get complacent a lot more. 

It's exams for some of the younger people in my cell too, so I have been "helping" people to study as much as I am studying myself by nagging at them hahaha. But the most challenging was Ethel asking me A Maths questions! When I was in secondary school, both A Maths and E Maths were probably my strongest subjects, apart from Geography of course heh. But I can't remember most of my A Maths theories now, although I'm still fine for E because I have been teaching tuition for that. And before I forget, I'm really happy that Ethel's getting acquainted with everyone, she's joining us for about a month now and is another addition to the Sec 1-3 kiddies that are invading my life. 

And the corps officers decided to do a quick cleaning up of the office cabinets and shelves today. There are things that are lying about for months that we probably don't need, but we still keep them around anyway. It's with pangs of guilt that I watch them clear up, because I meant really to organize a spring cleaning before Chinese New Year! Totally overdued. And they wanted to cart out huge stacks of old War Cry copies and the Words of Life devotional, which is when I realized that the hoarder in me really aches to have them thrown away. Okay at least the Salvationist in me reasons that we're supposed to be selling the War Cry as evangelical material. So I figured I can just lump like three months' worth of War Cry issues together, put our church flyer on it then distribute it door to door to my neighbours. At least there's some chance my neighbours will read it somewhere. As for the Words of Life, it's going to be my cell's new devotional for the next three months! 

Pictures, to cover up for the long wordy post. 

UPDATE

It's time to announce the winner! Congratulations to Joe Yong!! Thanks for inciting an illicit love triangle for my duck and Bulbasaur and Buttercup, I really laughed out at your tweet, and Matthew confirmed it hahaha. And, a consolation prize to Andrea too, for the literal lame-ness of it haha! To all those who participated, thank you for indulging in my silliness, really appreciate your efforts in crafting a caption, and I hope this little contest does not render the quality of your replies (and my friendship with you) diminished in any sense; they were all great and really entertaining! Hope you all had as much fun following this as I did, at least till the next contest that I can think of. You can read all the entries below. Thank you again!!!!!

----

Reaching my 10,000th tweet on Twitter, and I've decided to hold a small caption-the-photo contest to celebrate the occasion! I really got my inspiration from a friend of mine from school, he has wacky contests every now and then to celebrate his birthday and Christmas, and he just wants to give away prizes for the fun of it. And since this year is the year-to-be-generous year for me, I'm doing the same and my photo that I've asked people to caption, is this!

And these are the responses I've received thus far, I will add on to it when I receive one.

Lynn - Bubbles: "We shall not discriminate against the duck, just because he isn't green".
Yurong - in deep discussion on how to cure their owner from boredom.
Priscilla - Ducky to bulbasaur: Stop bulling buttercup. Buttercup (smugly): Yeah! Bulbasaur (grouchily): Okaaayyyy...
Joe Yong - Duck: Wat u looking at? This hot babe is mine. Green monster: I think I like u*pointing to duck* buttercup: this is awkward-.-
Tammy - duck: "hmm is that edible?" buttercup: "only one way to find out!"
Shi Hui - "now, Duckie, we'll just have to sit back and wait," said buttercup as she set down the watering can, "maybe he'll bloom."
Si Xuan - duckie and buttercup fighting against bulbasaur to save the world of twitter HAHAHA
Andrea - Duck: Ouch buttercup, ouch! you're stepping on my feet! Buttercup: oh yeah baby! Duck: bulbasaur, don't just stand there! Bulbausaur: bulbasaaaur~ Duck: bulbadsaur.
Eunice - THINGS IN LIFE THAT CAN'T BE STOPPED!

Some of it really cracked me up, haha the competition is only on Twitter or Instagram so you've gotta create one if you don't have one. And it's till 12 midnight tonight, the winner (chosen by me) will receive a $20 voucher. I don't know, maybe you can vote for your favourite so far and hopefully influence my choice. Have fun, cos I am having fun!

Been caught up with the frenzied writings of all my essays for the past two weeks. I am a literary machine churning out words by the thousands and sentences by the hundreds. So far it's been great, except that the grades I'll get are probably mediocre most of the time. The most frequent comments I usually get from my profs are "this is beautifully written, but ..." or "great expressions of language, but ..." haha! That's it, I just write well, but my arguments are usually lukewarm and my academic critiques half-hearted.

Anyway, I have to say the most interesting ones I had to write this sem include a 2,500 on Andy Warhol in the style of a museum review, and a 3,000 on three political cartoons. I'm quite sure my Warhol essay does not really fit as a review, but it was great fun to write because I'm learning about Pop Art at the same time. And I deliberately chose more obscure and complicated cartoons for the political cartoons one, so that I actually have the scope to write that much. But Tim was a great help for that paper, with his popular references and current affairs knowledge. I have one last paper to write, which is arguably the most difficult because it's the 20th century literature, I love studying it but I hate writing stuff on it.

Anyway, I took the night off writing tonight. Partly organized a small dinner and dessert, with some of the little ones from the cell. It involves dropping by Upp Thomson Road and checking out the new Udders ice cream shop that everyone is talking about. Photos below.

Managed to find time on Tuesday to go down to the Andy Warhol exhibition that's showing at ArtScience Museum now. Actually I don't really have a choice, because I have to do an essay on visual culture, and the requirements were to visit an exhibition of some sort. The module is great, just that I am not an art historian! While I do understand impressionism and modernism and abstract expressionism and some of the other art movements to some extent, I don't really have as much appreciation for the formal representations of art haha.

But Warhol is brilliant. There's no excuse to be mystified or bewildered by Mr. Pop Art himself, because it is really the dumbed-down version of high art into a celebration of the everyday. Really enjoyed the exhibition, just that towards the end I kinda realized that everything is silkscreen and repetitive (which is probably what Warhol wanted heh). So I went to watch his films. Which is even more repetitively deadening. Hahaha.

It was raining when I was done, and the Museum is a standalone building with no shelter to the Marina Bay Sands Shoppes. They have staff standing at the entrances of both buildings, lending out umbrellas for everyone. Pleasantly surprised, kinda made my visit even better.

Some of the shots I managed to sneak, until the museum staff came to tell me no photography. Love the Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor ones. Just classic.

Good Friday and Easter came and went, I was involved in the worship on Friday evening, and again on Sunday sunrise service. Believe it or not it is only my second or third sunrise service ever in all the years at church, which is really incredulous because I stay so near church and logically I should make the effort to wake up and hop over! This year is "mandatory" in a sense because I am playing guitar haha, but I'm glad it gave me impetus to drag myself out of bed at 6am just to come down. 

Good Friday evening was, needless to say, phenomenal and astounding. I don't know how to deal with emotions onstage heh it always always always overshadows the things that I want to say or do. Think I will probably need to devote time into this practice, especially at appeals and reflections where the Holy Spirit just decides to bless me with the greatest visions ever, but I can't articulate it without being breaking down. 

Probably the most meaningful Easter for the years to come. 

This needs to be written, because I cannot believe the amount of guitar/ukulele troubles that I am getting in the past two weeks! Last week I discovered that the nut on my ukulele snapped just where the E-string is supposed to be grooved at, and I was so devastated! One of my young guitar students wanted to learn how to play Train's "Hey Soul Sister", and of course you need to play that song on the ukulele because it just doesn't quite cut it on the guitar. Actually the ukulele is not so bad, the nut breakage just means that my first fret is effectively a dead spot. I can still get decent chords out of it as long as I compensate by playing one fret higher on the E-string. But nah, too much trouble and the guitar student just have to stick with her guitar and not the ukulele.

Then just now, because I will be doing the Good Friday service tomorrow night, I decided to give my guitar fresh strings cos the previous set of strings didn't last as long as Matthew and I thought it would last. But trouble always comes right after the other, I discovered that one of the bridge pins was semi-broken and just about hanging there for its dear life. Obviously I cannot just steal bridge pins from the other guitars, although I was very very tempted to just steal the pins from Tyrus' guitar hahaha. He will never let me hear the end of it if I do! But anyway I decided I will take the risk and reused my semi-broken. Then while tightening and tuning the new strings up, the lowest E-string snapped! You have to understand that I have never ever snapped any guitar strings before. Not when I am stringing guitars. Not when I am playing too. Can't believe my misfortune! Have no choice but to reuse the old string.

And in the midst of all of these, Joanna and Tyrus put me in a fix with one of the most difficult questions I have to answer. So they started nonchalantly asking if I ever contemplated leaving Salvation Army for another church, and of course I cannot wriggle my way out of that one. Heh the last serious decision for this matter was in the beginning of 2010, where I was really very close to just dropping it all and move on elsewhere, but I stayed on. So when your cell members ask you these sort of questions and then they ask why, the most horrifying thing you can tell them is because THEY are the reason I want to leave hahaha. Then they started talking about how they will get to my age one day and then bemoan their old age, or when I'm 50 and they're around 40s and we all have children and we are normal friends. Hahaha cannot imagine, cos I still think they are so itty bitty! Okay this will come back to bite me. I don't think they will read this. 

This is sort of a continuation from the two posts previously, with regards to the Good Friday and Easter activities for this year! It's probably the biggest and most exciting one that I've had all these years. The corps officers, and with the help of several groups of people, they've transformed the auditorium into an exhibition of different displays related to Good Friday and Easter. Major Paul nailed a huge cross himself, and there's an actual empty "tomb", and various artworks, and the weapons used in the torture of Christ etc etc.

Probably the most intriguing display that really ignited my thoughts was the Holy Communion practice. I remember a while back I was questioning quite a few Salvation Army officers about that subject, largely because it was triggered by Sarah haha. I've been to other churches and on the occasional services they partake Communion, I merely just sit or kneel without taking the wafer/bread or juice/alcohol. But I have tasted the wafer out of curiosity before heh, growing up in SA without really knowing much about Communion until I'm much older haha.

Do take the time to walk through the displays this week!

Now that we are in April, I just wanna pay tribute to all the concerts and performances that I managed to catch in March! It's almost as if March was a culture month, because I was at one or two art galleries, then I caught the Wicked musical, and then was at Esplanade for a guitar concert by Tama high school from Japan, then the most recent being at St Margaret's band concert because Joanna was performing.

I think the best experience would easily be Wicked, because I was really captivated from beginning to end and everything was just very well executed, with a great story and all. Haha really impressed! Think I seldom spend money and time to catch all these things, so when I do I am mostly wowed. Haha hard not to be wowed when you are already sitting in a grand auditorium!

Next up is Andy Warhol!! Anyone has books or notes on Warhol, please lend me! Need to write like 3000 words on him.