Something that has been bugging me a lot in recent months is how all my guitars and all the related equipment have been making a lot of noise! When I run it through the auditorium main speakers and through the amps, I'm getting a lot of ground loop hums and low-frequency buzzes and feedback noises. It's a terrible shame, because in my opinion everything sounds really great, but when I'm not actually playing, all these noises become dramatically amplified because it's so annoying and it drones into you. 

And for the longest time too, Matthew has been bugging me just as much as the hums and buzzes have been bugging me! He keeps nagging to get me to change my power sources or to go do something about my guitar pick-ups. I'm powering my guitar pedals daisy-chain style, which may or may not be the cause of the hums haha I am quite adamant that a daisy-chain is more than sufficient and I don't need one of those expensive power bricks or isolated power sources. And of course, I know that there is a known issue with my acoustic guitar pick-up, simply because it is not grounded. I did try okay, I did go down to guitar shops and I read some online help articles to explore my options, but I didn't manage to get very far and I never got down to grounding any of my pick-ups or power sources or pedals. Don't know how to, and don't know any technicians that said they knew any solutions either. 

Well okay I just bought a MXR Smartgate to deal with all these annoyances, Matthew included! So how this device works is that it functions as a volume limiter to eliminate unwanted noise. More than that, it is a gate because it allows my guitar signals to go through when I am playing, and it clamps up to disallow the hums and buzzes to NOT go through when I'm not playing. So there is this knob which allows me to establish the threshold level at which the gate will kick in, essentially allowing me to set the volumes at which the gate will allow my guitar signal to go through. Haha isn't it cool! I always thought that these noise suppressing pedals only come in the form of attenuation pedals, which just blanket cuts all noise (regardless of guitar signal or not) by 10 or 20 dB, or something like that. But a noise gate, and a "smart" one at that, is ingenious. And I have to say that it works pretty great for all my gear! It has various noise clipping options, but I found out that only the "high" option is useful in terms of noise reduction. Still, it is a marvel in terms of how all those annoying noises previously are now magically cut!  

Normally when it comes to electronics, I'm not a person to go get another piece of equipment in order to solve a problem, if you get where I'm going with this. Like, if I have a shaky table, I will look into the carpentry of my table rather than go and buy a new table or go and get carpet or rugs for the table to sit on; or if I have a software issue with the webcam on my laptop, I won't go and buy a separate webcam just to solve the problem. I want to fix the problem by dealing with the source or the software, and not try to get another additional equipment to cover up the flaws. So for the longest time I stayed away from getting a noise suppression pedal precisely because of this reason, but it seems like this Smartgate is going to be indispensable. Still can't deal with the grounding problems in my pick-ups and power sources, but I like the idea that Smartgate is so smart.

And I desperately wish that there's some Smartgate for my life too! I want to be able to tune out all the garbage that I'm receiving from the world sometimes. Hahaha that would be great isn't it?? Imagine being able to tune out nasty criticisms and nonsensical feedback, and you only hear the good stuff. Okay this may be a bit self-centered. Or maybe I want to tune out the needless information that I read on the internet. I read a lot a lot a lot of articles and long essays and reports online, and half the time I wish that it came highlighted or something, so that I get the gist of the information in as little time as possible and don't have to plow through unnecessary junk. Just the other day I was reading this short write-up about how you don't have to read everything, which is rather ironic if you ask me because I have to first read this write-up before I can choose not to read everything! But hey, if there's a Smartgate for my life, all I have to do is to set it on a particular threshold, and it just filters the relevant stuff. Imperative tool for studying. 

Here it goes. Meanwhile, I'll keep on the lookout for a Smartgate for my life.

Okay this is related to guitars. I've got a Taylor acoustic and a Duesenberg electric guitar, but I'm having problems because both guitars have different neck scale lengths and I don't quite know which one I'm supposed to be practicing with! Alright this may be quite facetious to you if you don't care so much about guitars, but it matters to me! I will try to simplify this as best as I can.

The Taylor acoustic that I have is smaller most normal-sized guitars. Hence, the guitar neck is correspondingly narrower because its scale length is 23 1/2", well shorter than the average guitar of about 25" thereabouts. And it's superbly great because this is what makes it such a nice guitar to play with, cos I seldom have to do crazy finger stretching on the strings, and it is generally easier on my hands. The Duesenberg, however, has got a much longer and wider neck of scale length 25 3/5", and the frets are jumbo frets. Which just means that the frets are more spaced apart from each other, so the Duesenberg is more of a stretch than the Taylor. Which also meant that the Taylor spends more playing time with me haha.

Now that won't be a problem if I'm just practicing for an acoustic guitar set-up, but the problem arises when I have to play electric guitar! Because I'm so used to the Taylor 23 1/2" scale length, I am completely out of sorts with the Duesenberg 25 3/5" and I cannot adapt fast enough to the sudden jump in longer fret distances and finger stretching! And if you know guitars and their characteristics, the frets are never evenly spaced on any guitar; instead it bunches up more and more closer the higher up the neck you go. That's where the scale length comes in and wrecks havoc on my playing, especially on the Duesenberg! What was previously 3 frets spacing on the Taylor can be as little as 2 frets spacing on the Duesenberg especially on the higher registers, which means more stretching and a need to get used to my fingers allocation for all the frets.

And the problem works both ways. Once I start getting used to the longer scale length, it takes quite a while to get used to the shorter one. They say that most guitarists who play a lot of electric tend to get very heavy-handed and somehow become a lot slower when they play on the acoustic guitar instead, but for me I started out playing acoustic for years, so the hard-handed treatment got me flying on the electric! It is much easier to play on the electric cos the strings are "softer", so I can happily slide and bend and move faster generally. But the differences in scale length will have me at my throat, really.

(I should have included pictures, but nah lazy to put my guitars to the pose and snap)

I think my annual Good Friday and Easter celebrations seem to be trying to top each other every year. A few years back Youth Dept dedicated one SAY (youth) service especially for Good Fri, and every year ever since we have been having annual Good Fri services with small-scale dance or drama productions, and all the super high energy worship sessions and phenomenal preaching. I count it my privilege to be involved in some of them, either leading worship or playing or sharing short messages. And then last year Maj Paul brought his grand concept of decorations and displays inside out auditorium itself. The centerpiece was a 2 or 3m tall cross, with displays including the open tomb and Holy Communion etc.

This year was just as grand, with a new addition of a Garden of Gethsemane and about 70 drawings from us youths. I loved the peace and quietness of the hall which allowed me to just wander through each exhibit and reflecting on the stations of the cross. It's an open exhibit throughout the week, and since I'm in church so often, I steal ten minute breaks from studies and work to go into the hall.

And perhaps a constant challenge would be trying to keep the SAY services fresh. This year they had a dance and several characters narration. I was playing electric guitar for worship and it was a blast. Again, I'm most relaxed with the acoustic, but I'm trying hard to convert into a better electric guitarist haha. My left wrist and arm are hurting from excessive guitar playing.

One refrain that has beenn resonating a lot in my mind was"death, where is thy sting". The idea that sin and death has been conquered, because of grace I don't deserve and because of overwhelming love, it kinda messed my mind on how it all comes together. Freedom in Christ!

Shall continue my melodramatic posts on Mamee about two or three weeks back? So in that previous post I mentioned that I was very upset with Mamee not including sufficient seasoning packets for their 10-pack jumbo. Since that time, my sister has decided to buy the 10-pack to try her luck at the seasoning packets too, and it turned out that there are only 5 seasoning packets to last the entire 10! Which meant that the swindlers at Mamee fully intends for you to share one seasoning packet to TWO packs! This is a huge injustice and a breach of all ethical food packaging, because in the past it was one to one!!!!! Such gall. I'm probably never going to buy another Mamee pack ever again. 

Okay rant over. On a much much happier note, and still related to food, I finally found the one-litre Milo which they pack it in a UHT pack! I used to purchase these one-litre packs and guzzle myself silly whenever I have to teach marathon tuition sessions, or when I have to stay up all night to do assignments. But in the whole of last year and this year, I haven't seen these one-litre packs on sale at all. Not even once. All I see of Milo were those tin cans of powder, or they sell it in 6-packs of 200ml. But a 200ml pack isn't the same as one full litre! So I ended up switching to Vitasoy one-litres instead for most of last year. But guess what, I finally found it stocked again on the NTUC shelves today! 

I risk sounding very very bimbotic and frivolous in all these blog posts. Sorry. I will try to act my quarter-of-a-century age. 

This blog post is prompted by a mini discussion on Twitter with a friend haha. It is with a certain sadness that I recently read that they are retiring MSN Messenger, or Windows Live Messenger. Never quite knew what to call it, because we always just call it MSN for short, but I think they undergone some name change before, hence Windows Live. For whatever reasons that come into play, they have decided to migrate this instant messaging platform to Skype, and that's it, no more MSN.

In a way it does not really affect my life now, because I think it must be at least two or three years since I last logged in to MSN, and as far as I know, very very few of my friends are still found there either! If I log in now it is probably a ghost town, and the E-buddy app thing to log on to MSN which I have on my phone is as good as useless. But contrast this to my secondary school and JC days (and possibly most of my army days too), MSN was practically where 75% of my social interactions took place. This was an era before Facebook and Twitter and Whatsapp and iPhone (first iPhone was 2007 I think) and what have you now that you can instantaneously send short messages to each other. Nowadays all the social and business chats are completed on my phone on Whatsapp, and sometimes email is dispensable too.

I guess in those "dark ages" of Internet's infancy years, the only way to sustain a decent conversation with someone was to get a computer, get online, and get on MSN to chat. Texting on the phone don't quite make the instantaneous grade, and calling may get too awkward or costly. MSN had cool smileys for just about any purpose, and if that wasn't enough you can add in more of your own too! I had one "stick out tongue" one which I really really liked, but I can't ever seem to find it now. And progressively they came up with group chats and 'nudge' functions and video conferencing and all these cool stuff.

I won't be ashamed to say that MSN was the place where I dated a lot! Okay, dated virtually haha. But it brought a lot of friendships and relationships closer. It is also possibly the cause of my late night owl habits too, because to go to sleep early meant missing out on conversations. Group chats with cell groups and project groups and JC orientation groups, haha that's where all the scandals are formed and solidarities forged. I could rant and rave without being too self-conscious because it isn't face-to-face, which meant closer sharing of stories and experiences! All those thrashy talk about how instant messaging and Facebook depersonalizes friendships are NOT true for me. I think I made a great counselor on MSN hahaha. 

It's a nostalgia virtual land of past happiness and sadness. Of course, when I first started Sec 1 and 2 cell leading six years back, the kiddies refused to get on MSN because they'd much rather flood me with calls and text messages. The young ones don't know any better hahaha. And when I did eventually move on to iPhone, I can't imaging life now without the phone-based instant messaging apps. I can't quite keep up with time and technology, but MSN's still a great platform for what it was for me. This blog post can't claim to give it the tribute it has in my formative years hahaha. In fact, very soon, blogging may just retire too. This world now demands instantaneous and short messages (hence, Twitter). You should treasure this trove I have here [sticks tongue out emoticon].

I usually try to maintain this blog with happy posts, but of late I am getting increasingly disappointed with certain things, and among the chief culprit this time is Mamee Monster noodle snack! I'm pretty sure that snack is not entirely ancient old-school because I still see it around commonly. It's a crunchy instant noodle snack with a small packet of seasoning, which you have to pour right into the noodle packet and you can eat it without cooking. I give in to the occasional snack once in a while, and I love Mamee because the seasoning is literally an MSG bomb! It's so salty that it wakes me up like a jolt, and eating one packet probably maxes out my sodium allowance for the day, but I still like it! My primary school days were spent guzzling the salty MSG in the truckloads I think, and it didn't help that it was selling at 10 cents a packet. These days I think I may not even be able to find it in schools anymore, because it is undoubtedly a health hazard.

In the past they used to package the seasoning packet into each individual noodle packet itself, but nowadays if you buy the jumbo pack of ten, they pack the seasoning separately from the noodle packets. Now that to me is fine, but I got one such jumbo pack last week and I'm tremendously upset because I discovered that instead of ten altogether, there were only nine!!! And worst of all, they only packed four seasoning packets!!! It is absolutely unforgivable! I don't mind if it was some machine logistic error that accounted for nine packets instead of ten, but the very least they could do is to ensure that there are nine corresponding seasoning packets! Now I feel like they are cutting corners at everything and terribly short-changing everyone. How do you expect me to eat Mamee without sufficient seasoning packets! Takes the whole joy out of it.

Friend told me that he got his jumbo pack in Indonesia or Malaysia, and the same thing happened: not enough seasoning packets. I want to keep faith and think that I just got the isolated jumbo pack error, but I'm upset and disgruntled and don't wish to try anymore.  

Something rather trivial and random. A couple of days back I met up with a group of new friends that I got to know through Twitter! It's one of those weird things where we know each other from Twitter and we follow each other's lives through Twitter, and just based on that relationship we count each other as friends even though we've never met. The story began when I took up a rotation curation job for an NUS Twitter account. The idea goes that you will hold administrative rights to that account for one week, and you can tweet about anything you want, but after the one week you gotta pass it on to the next person, and so on. The really cool thing was I got to meet a group of Twitter friends while on that curator job, and we eventually kept in touch on our personal accounts after that. A couple of them are also curators too, so it makes it all the more easier. 

And it is an incredibly strange "tweet-up" (meet-up), because here are a bunch of people that I converse a lot to on Twitter, but have never spoken to them in real life. I know they kinda exist in person, as can be seen from their display pictures or their occasional selfie photos. It's fascinating to know that they have an actual name, compared to knowing them by their Twitter handle. For the most part, the tweet-up was quite great, they are really nice people and I'm thankful for this convoluted way of meeting new people. Funny how us apparent strangers can gather out of nowhere and have decent conversations like this. Now who says you cannot meet nice people online???

Just want to blog about something rather amazing that happened today! Will get straight to the point, I got a new electric guitar! For the guitar geeks it's a Duesenberg Starplayer TV in surf-green. Got it second-hand off a guitar forum at almost half the price that is retailing in the shops now, which is an absolute, absolute steal. But as much as I can wax lyrical on end about the guitar, I think the real story here is about how I got my guitar.

So yes, I responded to the seller on the forum yesterday, and he told me that I can drop by his house today to test it before buying. Had to travel all the way down to Bukit Panjang, and it was along the way on the journey that I decided to text old (bird) friend Atiqah, because she lives in that area too and I probably passed by her house. Told her about my reasons for being there, and then proceeded on to go and meet the seller. He was a great guy, gave his name as Airi, told me that he was a recording artiste, has an album in the making, and that he brought down this amp from the studio just so that I could try the guitar at his house. All along I was just like, okay cool -shrugs- and wow-whee-whoo-ing at the appropriate places, because c'mon I wasn't really that interested in this guy's life, and for a fleeting moment I thought he was trying to brag to me! Besides I am here mainly for the guitar, so I was really just trying to be as indifferent as my insouciant voice can summon. So I kinda spurned most of his attempts at small talk about gear and music and life. He brought out another guitar and offered it to me to try, but I kinda declined and just focused on transferring him the money online and looking to haul butt out of there asap. 

It was only when I was midway on the journey back home that Atiqah messaged me again, asking if I bought my guitar from Sezairi Sezali! Apparently he tweeted about it right after I left his house, and Atiqah follows him on Twitter. I obviously do not. Also, Atiqah knows for a fact that he lives in that area, and that I am in that area getting a second-hand guitar! It is not very difficult to put A and B together, and then you get C and D and E and F because of his revelations of his music recording artiste career and whatever else... I promise you I looked like an absolute fool in the train, half-smiling to myself and half-shocked at that realization. I walked into Sezairi's home and spent 20 minutes in his house and bought a guitar from him and I walked out without recognizing that was him!

Okay perhaps at this point it will be a good idea to remind you who Sezairi Sezali is. He won the last Singapore Idol a few years back. Didn't really follow that contest, and definitely not a true fan, but I actually watched him perform at Indoor Stadium a couple of years back! He was the opening act for Taylor Swift's concert, which I was at. He's probably got thousands of screaming fans who would love to get an encounter like I did. And I could have laid claim to the fact that I was jamming with Sezairi right in his house! But obviously I didn't, and I feel like a gigantic idiot for being so oblivious to who he is! Okay la he's not a globally known superstar, but still, it must take a huge effort to win Singapore Idol, and to get to where he is today, right?? Hahaha and I walked right past all of these opportunities to get to know him. Least he could do is to shout out his name and I would be sure to identify him haha, but he is so humble and really easy-going and friendly. What a way to introduce yourself too, as a "recording artiste", instead of "Singapore Idol winner" or "Taylor Swift opener". 

Okay. Back to the guitar. The Duesenberg plays really great, and it is in spectacular condition apart from several small cosmetic dings which you can't really see unless you are looking for it. The pick-ups are a blast, and I think it's versatile enough for just about any kind of music in church. It needs a good polish and some maintenance work, but it's got a whammy bar for vibrato, which I will need to get used to! Think I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. 

In a series of meteorite mishaps and asteroid adventures that have happened today, I am so upset and disappointed and sad that these astronomical events didn't quite live up to my expectations! In case you haven't known, there was a meteorite explosion over the skies of Russia this afternoon, and there were reports of hundreds of people injured from the sonic wave that caused windows to shatter. You can Google some of the video captures that charted the meteorite's progress across the bright sky. It is absolutely amazing, it is practically a fireball that descended from outer space. And that's not all! It was calculated that at approximately 3:26am tonight there will be an asteroid named "2012 DA14" flying by at close range to our planet Earth. It won't hit us, and it certainly isn't the biggest asteroid ever, but it is the closest asteroid in I don't know how many years and it is once-in-a-lifetime event and the newspapers and the Internet are all talking about it.

If you know me, I am a strong proponent of witnessing the historical moment, and I like to catch record-breaking events or watch people create history. And the ostensible thing to do for asteroids and meteorites would be to stay up and try and catch a glimpse of it! I'm amazed at astronomy and I quite like stars and comets and planets and moons and the sort, so I wanted to at least stay up and watch the live video streaming that NASA is providing for the asteroid. It didn't help that I watched some of those Russian meteorites videos and they showed a huge fireball across the skies, and I kinda wound up expecting a similar fireball trail across my night sky at 3:26am. It really was splashed on the newspaper headlines and then NASA made such a big hype over it, and my hyper-imaginative mind went aliens invasion and end of the world and Transformers and Armageddon.

Let me tell you that it was just over about half an hour ago, and it was nothing exciting at all. Zilch in the night sky. No fireworks or trail or star or fast-moving bright light. And the video feed is super anti-climatic. It just went "And it's coming in... and it is over the Equator now... and it is at its closest to Earth now, and the people in Northern Hemisphere should see it exiting now". That was that!!! It was over in less than a minute, and I cannot believe I stayed up late for something that was stupendously boring and I couldn't see anything in the night sky! For all the hype, I would have thought that there will be more involved to it, but nope it just came and gone without so much of a whimper.

I am so disappointed now hahaha I think I kinda expected too much. I really wanted to see a fireball, but it wasn't going to happen at all, and my aliens or Transformers didn't exactly materialize either. The so-called historical event is terribly misconstrued too. I feel so cheated for all the excitement generated, only for it to come and go in a little over 45 or 50 seconds and then life goes back to normal, and it didn't even create a bang. Sigh. I feel like a poor little boy who didn't get what he wanted for Christmas hahaha. Okay this is so depressing and disappointing, I am going to bed wishing that I went to bed earlier. 

Led worship and shared the message last night at youth service, and this is something which I constantly tell myself to not get into such situations, but it still happens anyway! I always end up neglecting one for the other, and then end up unprepared for both, and I feel terrible about it. But last night was a good reminder to not trust on my own failings or to lean on my own strength. The topic for last night was on the power of the cross, and why did Jesus have to die on the cross for us.

I'd like to look back and think of how my ministry has evolved over the years? Like how I prepared my messages in the past and how I delivered it is drastically different from the way I do things now. It is all these changes that allow me to grow and lead more effectively, because you sort of gain experience as to what works and what doesn't. And I think my personal relationship with God also improved a lot too, in terms of the way I view my perspective of Him, and how it changes my attitude towards certain aspects of my life. I think preparation for everything is key. It helps that when I prepare for worship I know somewhere in the equation that I have to first worship God; and just the same that if I want to speak to others about Jesus I have to first meet Jesus and talk to him first. You know, such an orientation helps me tremendously now, which previously I didn't really pay much regard to.

But for all of these, boo-boos still happen! Last night I wanted to recite Isaiah 53 in The Message version, and I have this dual-translation Bible which shows the NIV on one column of the page and The Message on the other column. Then Rachel was laying down some really really heavenly synths on the keyboard, and I started the recitation of Isaiah 53 in The Message... but somehow when I flipped the page I read the second half in NIV instead, and didn't realize it until the end! Oh well. Mistakes happen. But I sincerely hope that God's word transcends different versions of the Bible, and the gospel is received just the same.

Generally I think I'm pretty much happy to be left alone in school, like there can be days where I just go for my lectures and tutorials, sit alone in class, and then leave for home, all without really having to talk to anyone at all. But that's not to say that I am a caveman recluse who hides from people, nor does it imply that I have no contributions to the class discussions at all! I do have very good friends that I've met in school, with whom I have lunch or dinner once in a while. I speak up in class about topics that I have great passion for, or on subjects that really interest me. But I just kinda think that my uni life is kinda drab and boring, not staying in hall, not really interested in school activities or CCAs, stuff like that.

And this is too stark a contrast with my JC and secondary school days! I go out with friends several times in a week after school, or we sign up to be student leaders or orientation leaders or go crazy in CCA. Haha I know deep down somewhere there's an enthusiastic Guan You and there's a quiet Guan You, and they kinda live on two different time tangents, but they are still there.

Anyway, I had back-to-back classes from 9am to 5pm on Tuesday with no breaks in between at all, save for the 15 minutes interval before each class began. Remembered being absolutely exhausted, and definitely not in the mood to socialize some more, but I still went out with a group of fellow Geography honours friends to have dinner with one of our prof! Prof Zhang took us for an economic geog class last semester, and at the end of the module he invited all of us to his house for a party (quiet Guan You did not attend). Several months later, they decided to ask him out on Tuesday for an early Chinese New Year gathering, and we went down to Holland Village and spent the evening at Crystal Jade.

Honestly, I can't say that I have a lot of things in common with these friends, but I really enjoyed myself. Most of the time I am really lazy to bring myself to the effort of getting to know my peers, but occasionally I try to bring out the social butterfly in me and enjoy things abit. 

January has just ended, and strangely it does not feel like the inception of the new year has only consisted of one month. I feel like I have been in 2013 for very long already, even though I am still not used to writing "2013" on the occasions that I have to scribble dates. I still have to add that additional stroke to make my 2 become 3, and even as I am typing this post I have to backspace and change my 2012 to 2013. 

I think part of the reason why January has seemed extra long is because of all the new changes that are taking place? School has resumed, although I will be the first to tell you that it is nothing exciting because it is my final semester and nothing interests me anymore. I have a new and wonderful cell group on Friday nights, and I am just starting to get to know them better. There has been some changes to various things and I am still trying to come to grips with all of them.

Possibly the most annoying thing in school is how everyone sort of has an idea of what they want to do when they graduate, but for the most part I am entirely clueless? And this past week there was a Career Fair in my school, and I vehemently skipped it because I don't want to know that I am not good enough for the jobs on offer. Truth be told I don't really want to do anything that is related to my Geography degree, and for whatever other reasons I am just trying to search for some open door somewhere which does not really exist yet. 

Okay maybe there are some doors, and maybe there are some signs, but for the most part I am belligerently trying to do things on my own and trying to assume that I know better. Which I know very well will not bode well, but ahh whatever, please let me make these mistakes. 

Went to send off Shaw and Katharina at the airport earlier today, and it's a real joy to meet people like them who consistently inspire me in my faith and challenge me in my Salvationism as I got to know them over the course of the last year and a half. They've been here for studies and work, and have also been involved in various ministries in church. And of course, it adds more international friends to visit if I ever have the chance in future. 

Weekend came and left, and I get the nagging feeling that I haven't done anything much that is productive. Although if someone else looks back on my behalf, they will probably say it's not so bad, but I feel like I want to learn something new or do something different. Haha okay next weekend! 

And lastly, I am in the preparation for a Friday topic on who is Jesus Christ. Again, I can't express how much I am impacted and inspired just from reading and researching, and for Christ's presence which is just so overwhelming. 

Keeping this short =)

Just a small little thought that is going in my head. I think the role of SMS and instant messaging and Facebook and Twitter and Whatsapp is quite indispensable to my cell group leading. For what it all does with keeping up with everybody, I think I am tremendously thankful for technology for being able to just message anyone in my cell and have a decent conversation with them from it. The obvious things that I can do with it are to disseminate prayer requests lists, or send out Bible verses, or small encouragements, but in reality I do very little of that haha. Majority of the time I get the feeling that the main fellowship of my cells operate separately from the Fridays weekly meeting, on virtual space!

And perhaps, just perhaps, sometimes I think I understand them even better through SMS, cos if I ask them out for face-to-face meetings it somehow seems are more intimidating for teenagers? Haha of course this is what they always say, that technology depersonalizes and destroys actual interactions. But I think it works in the reverse way for me, because SMS and Whatsapp brings out the more intimate and more personal sharing, and when I meet them face-to-face it breaks down more walls.

Haha quite funny how things change in a matter of a decade, cos when I first took my very very first cell group when I was 15, I didn't even have a phone! Friendster and MSN were all the rage. And when I took the Sec 1 and 2s a few years back, I know my phone was constantly abuzz with truckloads of SMSes and long phone calls (little girls). And fast forward to now, everybody in the cell or ex-cell is included in a Whatsapp group that never stops ringing cos there's 8 people all vying to speak.

Past four or five days hasn't been easy on my emotions. First thing is that the new school semester started again, and it is with an extremely poignant heart that I am embarking upon. It is probably my last proper formal education that I will devote myself to, and the final semester also marks a transitional period into working life. I'm not even sure what I want to do or where I want to work, much less even began to look. I am kinda waiting for some huge signpost to point me in the direction that I should head, but nope so far nothing haha.

More than that, Uncle Timothy Lim passed away last Saturday from cancer relapse. Past few years I had reason to get to know his family better, because his children Federic and Hannah were in my cell groups. Got the opportunity to visit him once in hospital a couple of years back too, and am just so captivated by his fervent pursuit of Christ-likeness. Think the least I could do was to accompany both my little kiddos as much as possible. It included a lot of supper, late night chats, playground time, and a lot of texting heh. Nobody handles death very well, and I have to be frank to acknowledge that I don't really know the right things to say or do for every circumstance. But the cremation service was today, and I hope that put some rest to everything that their family have been through past two or three years. 

Was away at Batam past two days for a weekend getaway. It kinda started with Amelia wanting to get out of country before school started (she is always doing this), so her and Matthew and Isaac and Priscilla and I all went holidaying! We booked a villa at a resort with really nice waterfront view, and it came with its own private swimming pool! Needless to say we were swimming every opportunity we could get, and board games and cards and TV and a little bit of shopping and arcade and lots and lots of junk food.

Really appreciated the time away from everything before my final semester in school starts again tomorrow, but to be honest I don't really enjoy such kinds of holidays where I don't really do anything at all! Haha I'm the kind of traveller that likes to go and do something or see something, and I will gladly stay in one foreign city by myself for a month (if my mum ever allows) and just live there. If you tell me beach resort with sun sand sea swim, I'll just baulk mostly.

But probably what made this great fun was the company of people I was with, and how I had to be the one jumping into the cold pool last every time cos we were putting the camera on timer, and each of us with a facial mask under the stars at 2am. There is a picture of my hideous masked face, but I think I shouldn't put it up here, lest it horrifies thee.

I usually try to do an annual recap post before the new year begins, but as always there are tonnes of things that happen during year end that makes it impossible for me to sit down quietly and think through this. This is a little bit belated, but there was the customary stayover in church after Watchnight service, and we were tearing the walls down with some mass games here and there. Past couple of years I didn't quite make it through the entire night, so usually by 4am or 5am I am scooting off back to my home to sleep, but this year just seems more energetic somehow. I don't think anyone really slept throughout the night for this year, and it was a great fellowship to start/end the year, following all the outings and camps in December.

I think every year I force myself to do a recap because it helps me to give thanksgiving and praise for all the good things in the year, and I try to see where my next step should be in the new year. Generally I think 2012 has been an excellent year for me, just that the first half of the year didn't really get off with a huge bang! Usually it gets really crazy by middle of the year because I would have gone overseas or have some church camp to help out with, but I think this first half of last year was relatively quiet. I totally cannot remember what I did for my 3-month summer break, except that I was in Sydney and Melbourne for Hillsong Conference! That was a good refreshing break for my soul, and as ever a great opportunity to come back to Singapore fresher to serve in all my various ministries. And of course, the year-end preparations for all the various camps and not really being home for most of December.

This is probably as much as I can remember of my 2012. It was quite a busy year, especially when I throw in school into the equation. I know I have told myself countless times to reduce my commitments in church and let go more so that I am not doing so much in church all the time, but somehow or rather it still feels like I am spending time in church almost every other day! Okay truth be told I am really not as involved in worship ministry as before, and a lot of people around me are picking up the things which I don't have to worry so much about. Church is really my safe haven to escape from school before I go home, mostly because it is in limbo and in transit en route home.

The new year has been quite ineffably ambivalent so far. If you remember my caterpillars, one of them metamorphosized into a nice butterfly, but the other didn't make it. Releasing the butterfly took ten minutes because there was quite a strong wind and it was testing its new wings. Which is somewhat how I feel about the new year. For one thing, it is going to be my last semester in NUS, and very likely the last 5 months of studying that I will do in a long time. I don't know where I should work in, I don't know what I want to do, and I don't really have much openings or offers given to me either. And adding to that, I committed myself to another two years of youth leadership, when I'm not at all certain what this additional two years will bring. It really feels like I've been doing this too long and too much, but it doesn't feel like a chore nor a burden also. Possibly the only reason why I'm staying put is because God isn't telling me to go anywhere.

Which is why everything has started now, even though my new cell group for 2013 has not officially met together in full strength yet! Already, the small little ones that Celine and I are going to be in charge of have already been telling us excitedly about their new schools and what CCAs they are going to choose and what new phones their parents are getting for them. I think the P6 camp and the youth camp of last year helped tremendously, and I am looking forward to new experiences and new challenges with this new cell group. 6th  consecutive year of doing this. Here we go.