Approximately 21 hours to SAY combined service tomorrow, with my thoughts in sort of like a cauldron of slow-stirring froth. I think I've led worship enough times to be unfazed by the daunting prospect of going onstage. But right now I'm trying to will myself to be nervous and excited and all hyped up for it! I've told my worship team to go in tomorrow night with an anticipation and an eagerness to allow God to work. Right now it sort of just feels like another worship session to me, but God really cannot be limited into the size of a box. Need to go with an expectation that something great is going to happen.

Anyway, 1st October represents a culmination-of-sorts for all the worship leadings for August and September. Think they were nowhere as hectic as what I used to do previously, but I've realised lately that time is much harder to come by, hence the flurry were still significant enough to take it's toll. And what with all the song changes and reorders and revamps for tomorrow, it was really a huge testimony that yesterday night's practice actually went quite well.

Okay. I've got a mid-term MCQ test to study for. It's Chemistry, gosh. I will do my best not to be bewildered by it. 

Led worship at Sunday service this morning, probably 3 months since the previous Sunday I led because I sort of recall the last one being in June. This year somehow just seemed like a lot lesser worship leadings for me on all the usual Friday Sunday slots, but it still feels like a lot! What with Gracehaven and combined camps and services. Alright la, trade off. But today was different because I decided that we should all do without chordsheets and play entirely by ear. Which was both risky and adventurous, but it went quite well despite all the mistakes. Shall work on that more and let the guitar be entirely secondary to my leading!

Recently I've been thinking a lot about worship stuff, particularly when I've been trying to "impart" some of the essential skills to Ming Hui Jolene Meng Ren Melanie. They're going to be worship leaders for the end-of-year camp, and it's not like I'm the best person to do it but I really really feel a strong calling to just help and mentor where I can. And the talk of the town is on exaltations and free worship being an essential part of leading (my personal thoughts la). Then the feedback that came back to me from some of them, about my leading this morning, was that I was doing a little too much of it and it wasn't too smooth at certain points. Hahaha. Alright, I'll keep learning and practicing too.

I should have noted much earlier that I finished my first Coetzee and Ishiguro novels, thanks to the literature module that I'm taking now. Of course I've heard of both writers' literary prowesses, and all the flitting mentions from my bookworm friends who extol the brilliance of both of them. But for some strange reason or another, I've never really sat down with any of their books until I had to take this compulsory module to fulfil my literature minor. Not regretting it the least bit! Because Ishiguro is so elegant and poignant that it's really hard not to empathise with, flawed though the characters may be. And because Coetzee is so down-to-earth and succinct that it's equally difficult not to like his logic and practicality. Definitely more of them to come.

Recess week kinda flew by, I started out with tonnes of work but now the load has been slightly halved and I'm wondering where am I going to find the time to do the other half. I wish I wasn't such a pig; I really really require 7++ hours of sleep everyday and it's really difficult to wake up in the morning. Once school starts, I really cannot afford to stay up so late every night. I'll really just sleep throughout the day and miss all my classes. Next week I have 2 mid-term tests, both of which remain unprepared because I clean forgot about it.

Should sleep now. I've got 2 tuitions to give, and a worship prac to lead, and aiming to complete two module's worth of unfinished readings tomorrow.

This morning, while getting out of my house to get to lunch, I realised that the NParks people or HDB or somebody uprooted the familiar tree by the walkway just downstairs of my block. There's not even a stump left, it's just a mangle of remnant roots and wood shavings and some leaves. It's almost as if the tree hadn't been there, if you don't look closely enough.

And I'm mightily upset. I know enough about trees to identify it; it's a wild cinammon tree. It's not a very significant tree to me, like it's not as if I put a swing there or I built a tree house there or I hid in the tree trunk or I climded it before. Okay I don't think you can do that to any of the trees in Singapore. Those are more like Enid Blyton adventures. But still, I walk past it almost every day, and it is an essential part and parcel of my landscape. In geography we call it sense of place, which put very simply just means the intangible experiences that make up your connotations of a place. So familiarity may be homely, thus such. I guess the removal of the tree constitutes a destructive sense of place for my neighbourhood.

They're burning all my bridges. So where do I go now.

I didn't sleep the whole night, and I'm not yet feeling the effects of it! Okay this is actually quite a foolish statement to make, because I'm sure later in the day I will feel like my eyes want to (and will) droop anytime. In any case I'm on top of the world now, because I stayed up all night to finish my essay! It's only a thousand words but it took the whole night because of the tedious need to synthesise everything and paraphrase from authors. One thing I never get is that given a thousand words, you can never get much creativity to throw in some of your own original ideas, so what happens is that I'm just summarising all that has been written on feminist geography. It's so pointless and I don't really think the lecturer will be interested to mark a hundred of the same essays. But aargh whatever I've done my part, now prof, give me my A!!

I don't have school till 12 noon, and theoretically I can sleep for about 2 or 3 hours, but I think I better not risk it. If I go to bed now, I don't think I will wake up until youth service tonight. No no no. I'll just find some miscellaneous stuff to occupy me for the next few hours. Or I'd just go school early. Hahaha there's a one week term break to study next week, so I'm feeling like it's holidays and my exams are totally over!

I was supposed to blog about Sunday, but I reached home at like 3.30am on that night, then Monday came and went, and Tuesday is on the verge of coming and going too. Anyway Sunday was good because it's one of those long long days where you're packed right from early morning all the way till late at night, and somehow everything just went according to plan. Sunday service worship, then "sneaked" out to conduct the Sec 1 and 2 Christian education thing, which wasn't as terribly chaotic on a Friday evening cell group! They're out to get me I'm very sure. But in any case, what followed for the rest of the day had mostly to do with Gracehaven worship, what with practice and then going down there for more practice. The actual worship was nothing short of great, except that I started tearing onstage when it just felt so moving, then you know when you cry your nasal tracts starts to get choked up and I couldn't reach all the high notes after that. But I think that's how God works, I sometimes think emotions can somewhat be a debilitating weakness whenever you're onstage, but when God touches you you really can't help but be in his presence. In any case I need to tear lesser because it's just hindering my singing hahaha. And then we went to send Tammy off to London after that! Which explains the very long day.

And yesterday, I was up till 4am doing up a presentation for today. Which I think is really idiotic because my classes start at 8am today, and it's the odd Tuesday when it's my longest day in school. But anyway my prof said he likes my concepts but he asks if I really know all the stuff there is to know about! Which is kinda spot-on, because I left the presentation until the last possible minute and obviously I couldn't have read as widely as he wanted me to. But in any case it's over. And I finally went down to science faculty today for lecture and to find my missing pencil case! I must have looked like an idiot pacing around in the middle of a lecture (not my lecture somemore, that's the best bit) and I couldn't find my pencil case anywhere. Then I went stationery shopping right after that. Hahaha.

Okay, shall sleep early and wake early tomorrow too! Time to tackle the essay. It's only a thousand!

The weekdays ended yesterday with two missing items for this week. My huge pencil case is presumably somewhere in school, and I highly suspect it's in LT27 at science faculty. I have science lectures every Tuesday and Friday, but yesterday being public holiday, I couldn't go down to verify its existence. In all likelihood I'll only next go down to science for lectures only, so come Tuesday I have quite little to believe that my pencil case will still be there after one entire week. Then last night I lost my water bottle! Okay technically it wasn't my bottle, because I kinda just took it from church because it was lying around for so long without anyone claiming it or using it! So it was quite ironic that the same bottle got lost in church. This I suspect is somewhere in the auditorium or social hall, but I couldn't find it last night and I sort of just gave up after finding for a while.

I don't like losing things. Don't like the thought that there's something missing from me and that item is lying aroung somewhere, but I don't know where is it and I cannot retrieve it. It's not the value of the object that's lost, because I get upset when I misplace my guitar picks too! Just don't like losing things.

I want to thank God because today I finally found the exact highlighter refill for the exact colour that I'm using for all my modules this term! My sister introduced that highlighter to me, and she said what's good about that was the refill option. The highlighter itself costs $1.30, and the refill pack (with 3 small bottles) is $1.60, so technically for the price of $2.60 I have bought 4 highlighters! What's more, my sister claims to have used this same highlighter for 2 years and she kept refilling it and it's still usable now!! I am wowed because I run through highlighters relatively quickly, or maybe that's cos I was using free highlighters last year which were all cheapo-looking. And this highlighter brand that my sister recommended would have been a panacea, but the thing is, I just can't seem to find the refill pack for my colour at anywhere at all! All the bookstores I've been to said it was out of stock. But just this morning, I made a detour to the school co-op bookshop just to check if they have it there, because a week ago I was there and they didn't have it, but I thought I could just try my luck because I had nothing to do too. Lo and behold hahahaha tadaaaaaa it was there!

Okay. This post is... Hmm. Sleep.

I miss guitar playing. Ever since I started school I have been neglecting the Baby Taylor loaned from Matthew, and the Maestro was lent to Dezmand for a while, but now that it's back with me, I'm not doing anything with it either. It badly needs a string change to get me inspired to play it again! But I'm procrastinating because for today's worship practice I'm going to use the corps guitars, so I never really got down to changing the strings. Sigh. Busy school.

Obtained a fever for the past two days! Hahaha I used the word "obtain" because there was one night when I only slept like an hour or so, just to prepare for the next day's class. It turned out that whatever I prepared, the lecturer didn't really go through. Anyway my sleep was disrupted for the next couple of days because I really need to cover up for my sleep debts, and there just wasn't enough time to sleep all day. Hence the fever was a bit like asking for it. Was running around school yesterday woozy and dizzy until I went to see the campus clinic and they told me I have fever, but not that serious.

Okay. Time for work again.