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!!!!!

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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.

Past few weeks I've been involved with the Good Friday/Easter weekend preparations in one way or another, some are intentional and some are just unwittingly incidental haha. First up and the biggest involvement is I am leading worship on SAY service on Friday night for youth! Which is a role that is fast becoming a fixture haha, cos this year will be the third consecutive year I am leading worship on Good Fri! I don't think Min Jie or anyone really set out to put me in for all three years haha it kinda just happened to be. But part of the stress means not being tempted to just repeat all my songs from the previous years and to come up with something fresh and something new to say. 

The other lesser involvements include painting of banners and setting them up (together with lights) in our hall! We've had a new corps officer since the start of the year and Major Paul had this really grand idea of a walk-in exhibition and activities for an entire week. The youths were then commissioned to do three "graffiti" banners which will be hung up in the hall.

This is what my group did after two weeks!

And this picture was the trial experimentation of what it might look like after we adjusted the lighting positions. There will be an actual banner raising this Friday I think!

Took to the stage again to lead worship this morning, and this blog is fast becoming a whinge about how I am leading worship a lot lesser now and blah blah blah. Haha but it's true! The number of times I've been onstage last year and possibly this year too has been a lot less than half of what I used to put in, and I am just thankful there's still something for me to do.

Anyway, I think I put this morning down to nerves and mishaps, because on first strum I realized my guitar's horribly out of tune, which makes this like the third occasion my guitar's out of tune right before worship begins. So anyway I had to tune it midway, and I forgot chords and some of the song arrangements, but the team was great in covering up. AND I SNAPPED A NEW PICK! I only got the pick like a few weeks ago, this is the first time I'm using it, and I was just telling everyone that I think this pick feels real good and all, then halfway through it just broke into two. But I am grateful for the way it turned out, it is all of God and not me.

Other news, I barely scrapped through my two mid-term literature tests last week. To be very honest I didn't prepare much, because one was open-book and the other was some visual appreciation response test. My consolation was that if I studied hard I wouldn't have made a lot of sense also. But there was a lit presentation too, and my topic was gender and space. Which is what we talk about all the time in GEOG classes, not as much in the LIT classes. So you can imagine, I laid it down with such aplomb that my prof had a special praise reserved for me after the class. Haha that was at least one good thing that happened, and I'm glad I'm not a lit major. I enjoy studying literature and I love the concepts, but I cannot write essays from it. 

This might just be my craziest week so far this year. I have two mid-term tests coming up on Thursday and Friday, and I am not doing the best preparations for both of them. I don't have much of a choice actually, because I already am taking lesser modules this term. Studying isn't as agonizing if I don't have all these tests getting in my way. 

Was out with Joanna today at this quaint cafe near Thomson Plaza. It's truth that we never see eye to eye ever, she has a million different perspectives that run contrary to mine and she's always annoyed by me. And it's likewise for me too heh. But for once, this short outing actually made my day, for the lazy reprieve away from work, strolling along the neighborhood and conversations over coffee. I've come to conclusions that she is totally asexual hahaha. 

Can't quite imagine how much of this I would be doing any longer. 

Sometimes I look back at all the times I have tried to connect in some ways with the little girls in my cells, I am really amazed at how I am still barely hanging there after so many noted failed attempts. Haha okay I really must admit that it takes me all the patience and the constant goofing around just to understand somehow what goes on in the mind of a young teenage girl. With guys it's always a lot easier, possibly because I was at that age before and I know exactly how it feels like, but for girls it seems like I take an eternity to learn, and then each girl is different from the other, and it's just such a gargantuan effort to remember a million things I ought or ought not to do.

And I can safely say that all the books or magazines or articles I've read before does not at all prepare me for what really happens. Yes, that's right, I actually spend time reading about how to reach out to teenage girls, because that was what I was thrust into when I first began lower secondary school cell leading, and nothing in the books told me what to do when they start crying or having opposing views (only to change them years later hahaha) or just having unique perspectives. How in the world am I supposed to hang out with the girls without being a total perv hahaha go shopping with them???

I know she's reading this, but the mentee is back and I am so relieved. Not that she does a lot la hahaha, but then occasionally I really have no idea what to do with the girls in my cell and I'll be like Jolene please settle this, and voila everyone's happy. Maybe same-gender cells function precisely in this way, but I've always been a firm believer of the opposite gender playing important roles shaping the person you are. Haha I'm the kind of person that will encourage people to go date around and get into relationships and experience break ups for themselves, okay that's another blog topic for another time.

Okay, patience.   

It's 5.15pm now, and I think today is the best Monday school day ever for the past few months. There was quite a bit of rain this morning I think, and usually it would have been a tremendous drag trying to haul myself out of bed. And usually my Monday classes start at 2pm, so I have quite a long sleep-in, but I had to be at school at 12pm today, and surprisingly that made my day. Okay la maybe because it's a good hair day too. HAHA. And, I haven't received a single email from any of the frequent spamming departments. For a Monday, I think this is rare. Maybe all the admins are busy clearing email backlogs from over the weekend. Or maybe I really succeeded in my solo quest of trying to get them to unsubscribe me. Whatever it is, it's a good Monday.

And, last night I was at airport with a few of the young ones meeting Jolene (and Joe Yong) from their return from Shanghai! This fully makes up for not being there when she first left 6 months ago, and it's good to see the mentee again after she ran away.

Okay that's it, printing readings that are more than 2 weeks old. 

Not in the best frame of mind because of severe lack of sleep. Submitted a 1000-word review last night (or should I say morning) at 6am, and I'm reeling from the repercussions of pulling an all-nighter. Okay technically no la because I still managed to get some sleep in the end. It's my first assignment submission for this term, which is quite rare because it's more than midway through the term already. Haha a 1000-word is a no brainer for a wordy nag like me, I have no problems meeting the word limit.

Anyway speaking about numbers, I've just hit my 8,888th tweet on Twitter today! To celebrate, I've invited the first three respondents to take a picture of themselves with the number 8888, and just for participation alone they'll get a free drink! I'm too lazy to compile the photos that I've received here, but they were hilarious and ingenious, thanks to Shi Hui and Lynn and Amelia for indulging my crazy gimmick! I kinda figured that I need to do giveaways like these more often, because it makes people happy and it gives me a chance to spend money too! As it is now I have an idea for the 10,000th tweet and can't wait for my tweet count to reach there asap! At the rate I'm going it will probably take another two months haha.

Okay bed I need. 

I think whenever it's my turn to take the Sec 1 and 2 Sunday classes, I tend to go wild on the topics because first thing is that I'm not bound by what we are doing on Friday youth services, and second thing is that the other adult auntie uncle teachers don't really sit in much so that means the discussions get way more crazy. So last week was honouring your parents, and it was pretty much the best setting to air your dirtiest laundry about our parents. I love my parents a lot, and I'm sure all the youths do too, but every teen I know has just about something to say about the irritating things that their parents do that bugs them. And everything was just "mum keeps nagging" or "dad keeps scolding", with a strict confidentiality clause that we won't go telling on each other's parents after that haha, but was good in the end to tie it up with honouring and respecting them.

Today's even more wacko, because we finished last week's topic already, so I did something that I really wanted to address for a long time. We were talking about swearing and vulgarities, and I think it was probably the only time they didn't have to watch their language and we could be a bit liberal with the f- and s-words haha. There was this long list of words that we all deem are not so appropriate at certain settings, and I've got all the usual swear words up there (with the Hokkien varieties), but then Rebecca, bless her, came up with "meow" and "gee mama" as her worst swear/cuss words ever. Hahahaha okay next time I am tempted to curse in exclamation, I'm so gonna just meow out loud to myself, and it's going to be so ridiculous that the intention of it all is all lost, haha precisely the point. 

And, the triumph of it all. Because I missed sermon since I was at class, and for some reason everyone I met after service kept referring to what was preached during service which I have no clue about, frustrating max! I managed to obtain the sermon notes which my corps officer left behind on the pulpit, I'm assuming they don't really need it anymore because they kept their Bibles but didn't bring along the notes, for the past few weeks too. I'm like vociferously going through it to update myself, and it's great their notes are actual essay speech too. And most of the time I come across Col. Bob's notes too, if he's preaching, because he leaves a copy in the control room for the slides projection, and his notes are great too as it's all full sentences. Would be very different if it were my own notes; it will all be one-word point form. Hahaha fastest way to recap sermons, just keep the notes they leave behind. 

This is an effort to put more pictorial stuff into my blog rather than just chunks of words. Wanna share something that has been really baffling to me, cos recently I've been seeing these posters around at bus stops and MRT stations quite a bit. So the WWF tells me to save the chilli crab, but then they show me a picture of a shark??? And if you read the fine print it does not really elucidate the connection any further too! What has crabs got to do with sharks? Okay yeah sharks are the top predators of the food chain, and I can infer mostly that this probably has to do with the "no shark's fin" movement, but that doesn't license you to just put chilli crabs up there with sharks!! 

And then there's that last bit which says "You can help by texting 'shark' to 98889992 or pledging 'No to shark fin' at wwf.sg", so I decided to text and see what happens, like maybe they will send me more info or something, but nope nothing. Actually this was what I really did... (I waited 15 mins okay!)

Conclusion, this whole thing just does not make sense. My friend thinks that maybe sharks and crabs mate together or something. I hope that's not true.

Currently on a crusade trying to weed out unwanted emails from all my email accounts. It didn't really bother me previously until in recent months, mostly because my emails are pushed to the iPhone, and it becomes really annoying when I have buzzers and alerts for each of these junk emails which I just delete without hesitation. The biggest culprit is the NUS school emails! They give me notifiers from all sorts of departments unrelated to me and my course of study! There's mailers on economic decision surveys, reminders for me to observe traffic rules, invitation to lectures on philosophy and psychology and science discoveries, free workshops, they even tell me when the provost blogs his latest entry! It won't be so bad if my own geog or lit department spams me, because at least that is my immediate department. But why are other departments abusing the "all students" email group?? And who in the world is the provost and why must I read his blog??

And I have been emailing all of them with vituperation telling them to unsubscribe me from their notifiers. Of course in all likelihood they cannot do that, I'm sure they can't just delete me from the "all students" group. But it's worth a shot I think, and lets me vent my frustrations at unknown office admin personnel who thinks that everyone in NUS is interested in their activities. I think they have their own department websites and notice boards and pamphlets for all of these notifiers already, there's no need to further promulgate it through email.

The Gmail account is much simpler, I just need to unsubscribe and usually it's a simple process. And I have to say, Gmail spam detection and group labeling is a lifesaver. I don't have to sieve through unwanted spam at all. Ugh okay angsty. 

I've decided at the beginning of this year that I shall place more emphasis on birthdays this year! I think for the past two years I have routinely ignored everyone's birthdays, and I no longer spend the time and money to write people birthday cards and presents. Well, unless there is a huge group of people sharing for someone's particular present, or something equivalent. But I compensate for it by writing lengthy Christmas cards and spending more on gifts during year-end. And traditionally I have always went by the policy of "cell groups first", so those in my cell group I am more willing to splurge more on presents and go entirely verbose on their cards! Haha so for this year I will take more effort to remember people's birthdays, and I will actually bother to type out that short Facebook shout-out (cos usually I do not).

And for the more observant people around me, yes I am trying to get back into the habit of wearing a watch more frequently to be more socially adherent to being on time! The last time I actually wore a watch every day I'm out was when I was in primary school. I think my mum forced me to, but I stopped wearing because I hated the feeling of things trapped/wrapped around my wrists. This wrist entrapment is good because it is so annoying that I keep fidgeting with it so much, and in the process I check the time a lot more often than usual. Still hate the feeling of it on my wrists. And kudos to the very observant friends that I have. 

This is slightly overdue, but on Sunday I was down at Dunlop Street and Haji Lane with Charmaine, with the purpose of checking out this small ukulele shop. She wanted to get one, and I heard of this shop before and wanted to see if I can take my ukulele interest anywhere further. Have to confess that the only times I actually visit that area is during cultural excursions, and from the looks of it I will definitely go back again, with the film camera this time and explore all the indie shops. And it was great catching up with her too, small trivia goes that she was in my cell years and years ago. Yes I am that old, and been cell leader for too many cells. Old =(

In the midst of preparing for a presentation tomorrow morning. The group members and I discovered a new place to eat in school! One of them suggested to go to the University Cultural Centre for the meeting, and then out of nowhere there was this Alcove Asian restaurant which wasn't too bad. New place for lunch in school.

Finally received letter from Priya again, I think the letter got lost for three months because the translated copy was addressed to a Miss Siew! But Priya's original letter had my name on it, and I have no idea how the error happened haha. But as always, each time I receive a letter from her I am instantly reminded of Bangladesh. Wanna go again, but don't fancy the hot weather so much haha. 

I'm bowing to intense pressure for me to reduce the number of words for each entry in this blog. Everyone tells me one big chunk of words isn't appealing to read, so from now on (until I get sick of it) I will try to be more succinct, cut to the chase, and paragraph more. Hahaha I like many many words, and I always think words are free-of-charge for you to express yourself, so might as well use as much of the inherited language as possible. Until I write an actual book, I think that this blog is my verbal diarrhea of everything and anything, so hooray to words galore. Honestly I don't care if most people just go TL; DR. But apparently not the same vision for everyone, and already as it is I am using too many words to write this. Okay, shorter posts, I will strive for.

Today I had lunch with two girls from one of my literature class, and it's like a collision of planets because I have totally no idea what really goes on in the lit department. They are updating me about scandals and juicy news about profs and students and whatnot, really interesting because I'm in my geog nut most of the time. All my lit classes fall on Thursdays and Fridays this term, and it's great that I actually have company in the lectures now, after being alone for all my past lit classes that I can remember.

This self-imposed word limit is an agony. Is this short enough?!!