The weekend was awesome for a number of reasons. First was that I eventually got down to agreeing to share my Bangladesh trip experiences for this year's group that will be going up. My captive audience were like 5 aunties, or aunties-to-be. Hahaha but it was so full of God, and I am really thankful for opportunities like these that gives me a reason to share. Privileged and thrilled to be a part of World Vision's movement. They're trying to get me down as a more permanent volunteer. We'll see where this leads to heh.

Second cool thing was my first visit to Universal Studios! Invitation to go cos there were free tickets from Joanna, with Shihui and Meng Ren and Anastasia (new friend). It was Halloween celebration, so there were zombies walking all over and ghouls and vampires. My first time on a major roller coaster too, probably not doing it again anytime soon haha. Hate the drops. And final thing to mark the weekend is the first running exercise since goodness knows when. Participating in a half marathon in Dec, and I am totally in trouble because I have not been running or exercising at all. Won't have the time too I think, because school is just so busy with assignments and exams. Muscles are aching now, but I aim to do at least a 15km before the event. Have a month to go haha

Today marks day one of my very first involuntary house eviction since I moved to Bishan when I was like 2 or 3. Mum has decided that the house badly needed a face-lift, so we're revamping the entire kitchen and the toilets, and eventually there will be a wall repaint. The renovation workers came this morning to demolish everything, and we're currently housed at my neighbour's apartment because it's too dusty to live with the rubble and debris. And just in case you were planning to pay me a surprise visit or something equivalent on that one-in-a-trillionth odds, I am just down the corridor on the same level from my original home. It is literally next door, which helps greatly because it makes for easy shifting of all the necessities we require at this temporary home for the next month or so.

It is a bad idea as well because I feel like my real home is still next door, but it is not livable and it doesn't make much sense to go back there at night. I think I envisioned it such that I could just stay out the whole day and escape from all the renovation and noise, then at night just go back to colonizing the study room and go to bed in my bedroom. Obviously this was highly idealistic, because now everything is boarded up and doors are locked and there's tonnes of boxes everywhere. I don't really favor the need to move, even if it is just temporarily.

Still adapting. Haha we are all creatures of comfort.

A lot of things on my mind, and it's all got to do with time and space. I think that as long as I'm still a part of this society, whatever the forms, there's always the occasional celebrations that you sort of have to be there for. Like birthday parties, new baby, gatherings. I'm fulfilling my social obligations this month, while at the same time finding enough time to bring my studies to some semblance of order. And once in a while I catch up with news of certain people and I am struck by (1) how they used to be my friends (2) how long since I met them or heard anything from them (3) how I should go about catching up. 

There's just something that I can't really put my finger down to it. In between all the itinerant journeys from school to home to church to guitar teaching assignments, I somehow feel mildly alive to be doing so many things all at once. The offer just came this morning from World Vision to share about Bangladesh trip last year, and something is preventing me from saying yes. Haha I don't know what is, I'm not shy I've got all the stories to tell I have marginally more time now than last few weeks I can easily do this, but I think I'm just lazy and trying to find excuses not to take it up. And then there's all the hall rentals and various church commitments in Nov and Dec which I so readily agree. This is a two-headed snake. 

The side-note is, I think I do not deserve the phenomenal grades that I got back for most of my assignments. For all the last minute procrastination and sleepless nights and general tardiness, I am amazed and thankful. At the start of this semester I told myself that I didn't want to treat my entire undergraduate degree like it's some cheapened second-rate experience, because I have been doing so past two years and I want to start justifying  my presence in the university haha. Not that it really worked out, but at least good marks are a way to start.

Chalked up yet another sleepless night while in the quest to complete my essay. Yup, sleepless is really no sleep. For the entire night. For the umpteenth time this semester, be it for essay or for assignments or readings or whatever. I am going to school and everyone is going to tell me I look horrible and if I am hopeful enough they will pat pat my head an tell me to sleep more. I know all these will catch up in time, I am shortening my life span, I'm going to collapse from exhaustion. But I really seem to have the most energy after 12midnight everyday. My brain comes alive and everything clicks at midnight and the essay flies. Haha not last night, at 4am I was still stuck at 500/2500 and it was a bit worrying. Or maybe I should just stop putting essays till the eleventh hour and then finally do something about it. 12midnight is when entire galaxies are birthed and the stars start colliding with each other to produce even more stars.

For now I am going to operate on screensaver mode in school and try and stay awake. I reckon I will last till 2pm then I will feel the toll from last night. Still have two more major assignments for this sem, but hey are due a month away and I haven't got any info on it yet. On a happy note, I'm going shopping for Priya adopted Bangladeshi tonight. Haha what do 14 year old girls like? Of a different culture of a different gender.

There are some things in life that I just do not have faith in. You know those plastic packets that they give you when you order hot drinks from the coffee shop? Yeah I have this irrational fear that the plastic will just decide to tear and all the liquid inside will spill out all over the floor. I think it comes from the fact that we use those same plastic packets for water bombs at camps! So everytime they put my hot coffee in one of those plastic packets, I have mental images of that coffee exploding on someone.

And then in school, they put the coffee in a proper cup with a proper lid, but it is not a styrofoam cup. Which meant that it will be too hot to hold it for long periods of time. So o combat that, you can take one of those small plastic bag material thing to loop around the cup and it will act as a carrier. But for the life of me I have never taken one of those things. I'd rather hold the cup physically without using that carrier thing. There's a way to hold it without getting scalded, just hold the top and bottom without holding it by the middle. Again I fear that the carrier will snap, because it is plastic bag material!! Or worse I fear that the carrier will inadvertently snap open the lid of the cup and I don't know and I will be spilling coffee while walking.

Guitar class with the three aunties taught me one thing today: to have simple, child-like faith. Because that's all that matters, knowing and believing without seeing. I need to trust and hope that everything works out fine.

The past 48 hours were a blur to me, because things happened so quickly and there were so much to do. I don't think I was very awake at all! But yeah, there was the Pri 6 camp from Thursday to Friday, and was co-leading worship for SAY service last night, and in between all those I had to find time to write a 2000-word essay that was due today 5pm. The only downside was that I was supposed to go Johor Bahru with the other cell members (Matt's cell) and I couldn't because there was no way my essay could have written itself while I'm away. Haha but oh well, essay is finished already and I enjoyed myself tremendously at P6 camp. 

For the record, I think it was my first children's camp? I've been on outings with Sunday School because it is sort of required in the job scope for Sec 1 and 2 cell leader haha, but I've never gone on an actual overnight camp or longer than a couple of hours or the such. It wasn't that difficult la hahaha I think P6 Sec 1 Sec 2 all very close to each other, so it wasn't terribly back-bending for me to connect to their wavelength. But I don't know how long I will be doing this haha, now the age gap is 11 years! But the highlights were giving them free reins to start barbecue fire and cook food, Kar Leong's sex talk with them (okay more like growing up talk), and low elements rope confidence course. I did learn that at P6 they are a lot more forgiving and more accepting. A whole lot less judgmental, they can tease me for not getting up to actually do the rope course, but they'll forget the next instant. If it were youth group I will never hear the end of it! But yeah I didn't go up because I was really tired from doing essay the night before. WBC retreat centre has assumed new meanings for me for staying up late there haha. And of course at P6 the tears came a lot more easily for everyone too. Hahaha. And it culminated in SAY service which was easily all about God. Love how each time is a new way to experience God and see his grandeur in unity. 

I think shall go watch a movie to unwind or something. My mind is a little bit twitchy from the essay exhaustion and it is like in some state of euphoric high from too much coffee in the past 3 days. 

I discovered today a new abbreviation, and I'm not very sure if it's really common or the next big thing, because I have never ever seen it before prior to this. It goes "TL; DR", usually posted as a form of comment or reply to a post, and it stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read". And I'm instantly blown away by the wit and sarcasm and irony that went into this, hahaha this is precisely the kind of stuff that changes my life and have me staring in wonder! I'm amazed at how laconic and succint the abbreviation manages to convey. It's still in good grammar shape, and it's like one of those dismissive I-simply-can't-be-bothered things that you throw at annoying smugly people. And considering that I've never seen it before, my usage of such will get people asking what in the world was that, and the tables are instantly turned because it is then my turn to be smugly and I can recite out syllable for syllable just what I thought about their smugness! That's not to mention the semi-colon use, which makes it so upmarket and touché and dribbling with class. This kind of stuff is way above your usual LOL or IDKIDC or TYVM. It's a comeback with a kick-ass attitude; like a instant blame on you being too verbose and garrulous, and calls for people to get specific to the point and stop beating around the bush.

And as I am writing this, of couse I am aware that I fall into that category of taking out too many words to say something. Haha I've lost track of the amount of times people berate me for being naggy, or how I just have a tendency to put too many words in a sentence to explain something. Hahaha this post is like some confused self-reflexive piece. One moment I would totally relish using TL; DR on people, and the next moment I can totally imagine people commenting TL; DR to me. It is the great irony of it that makes me so highly amused at this heh! I love language and words, and I love the way how each word with its own meaning can be put together into sentences and paragraphs to form entire different meanings altogether. And to me the more words the better, because it is then you get all the space to express your emotions through your diction.

A lot of people don't care of course, and society just demands us to be concise and precise all the time because nobody has time to read a long SMS or email. Lest I sound sanctimonious, I fall into that trap myself too, because it is those emails that exceed five lines which sit in my inbox for a couple of days before I realise I need to sit down, get into wordy mode and type a reply. Everything must be instantaneous nowadays, if you can't say it in three lines then you won't get my attention.

I am very well aware that most of my blog posts will fit perfectly into the TL; DR category. Hahaha maybe that's why they have Twitter, it's 140 characters and nothing more. I think it's a fine balance. It's alright to be wordy at places, and unacceptable to be too short at others. Can you imagine if I submit a 140 character tweet as an essay assignment to my professor? Ah hahaha but one day if I really become a teacher, I'm going to write a fat TL; DR for all those who exceed word limits. And I will dot the dot and curl the comma accurately in that same penitential manner as required of that semi-colon.

Sleep patterns severely disrupted again, I only got to bed last night at 6am! And the start of this week looks to be another topsy-turvy week where I will not have a fixed sleeping pattern and everyone is going to comment that I look really tired and I lost weight. I think it's the long hair. Okay not really very long, but it's a mob on my head and the longer it grows the more wavy it becomes. My dad's hair is curly, but my mum's one is relatively straight, so I guess I got the in-between waves.

Anyway, I am really starting to like my guitar teaching assignments! This three ladies that I converse mostly to in Mandarin and I've been teaching them for a month odd or so now, I really like how their faith is so simple and straightforward. They are learning guitar because they want it to be like an avenue to praise God in their quiet time, and I am hugely impressed by the constant reminder to keep my life uncluttered. So many things threatening my attention everyday, and it's so difficult to not be bothered by everything that goes around me and to just focus. The other one is a French family, I'm teaching both the young daughter and her father. It put me in a huge fix because I was so afraid I will sound too old and rigid for the girl, and when it was her father's turn to learn, I had to work so hard to get rid of the "I'm-speaking-to-a-child" diction and tone, and a couple of times I caught myself belittling the dad! Gosh but all of them are an absolute delight, glad to know new people and to teach.

Okay. Sleep.

So it's ten minutes to 1am and I'm sitting here in front of my laptop tired and disappointed, all of me wanting to fire up at a lot of things and getting all irritated. A million thoughts about basic responsibilities and commitments and everything flashing through my mind, and I am blogging now because it keeps me from sending any unwanted emails or SMSes that will vent my displeasure. Hopefully by the end of this post I'm more calmed down and I will try and see from another perspective. 

I think that I've done my part to the best of my abilities already, and I have prayed more than sufficiently and I am more than ever willing to let go and jump into the deep end trusting that it will be alright. I worry all the time, and I keep trying to tell myself to just relax and let go and trust, but I think I'm always caught unprepared when my worries materialize in front of me. I really don't appreciate the way the circumstances is/was, and I really really am on the verge of just demanding an explanation and exhort some sort of answer. If not deemed satisfactory I want to say just choose the blue pill or the red pill, either take it or leave it, it ends here tonight or you continue on and don't abandon it again. 

But then again nobody really gets anything done by intruding into other people's lives and coercing stuff from them. Aiya I don't know what to do la, and all of me screams tired and despondent but I cannot, and I really just want another long break. 

Okay I shall backspace all the SMSes I typed but didn't send, leave it for tomorrow. 

This post is for the mentee that just flew to Shanghai! Haha it will probably go unread by her because last I checked she doesn't visit this virtual space much, unless I tell her imperatively to read and only will she grudgingly  do so, while skipping most of the verbosity found here. But yeah, two Saturdays ago we were planning a surprise party for Jolene at her place, and she was coming back from her own cell outing (of which they were in cahoots with us too) and she was very pleasantly surprised. And a few days later I conveniently overslept for her send-off at the airport, and oversleeping is an understatement because I woke up an hour after her plane took off! Considering the time to travel to Changi airport and the time for pre-flight check in and whatever, it's a massive lateness. And it wasn't the biggest mistake in the world in my opinion because she is only gonna be there for half a year or so, but it is the biggest mistake like at this point right now because I only found out the huge gap that she left behind.

Okay I'm probably only saying this because I am slightly irritated and facing a huge test of patience, but I think that a lot of times I take it for granted that she's just there doing the things that she does without really making a show of her doing the things that she does. And I'm always so flippantly habitual in telling the girls in my cell that if they have girly problems they can go find Jolene because I would never understand them. I can't exactly be there if they want a hug right? And then I always think people connect with their same gender a lot better than with the opposite, and I see how the girls share a bond with Jolene that I think I will never ever see with myself, cos it's just different! Which is kinda true haha I would totally imagine them telling the korkor one thing but telling the jiejie the same thing but with a lot more emotions and details and blah.

So while she is escaping from everything in Singapore and working in Shanghai, I feel like the sec one and two cells is now led by three guys who will just neglect all the girls and steam-roller over all their feelings hahaha. Okay nah maybe not, but I miss her perspectives on the way I do things, and I miss her helping out by just being there. And of course I miss the friendship la haha it's just not the same knowing that she might be at church Thurs Fri Sat Sun and consequently feeling as though I always take this routine with such banality. It feels like forever that I've known her, not as well as I should or I could but might be because she was my cell member and then co-cell leader, which makes it all the more easier to just look out for her and pray for her haha. And when I'm through thinking that she always seems to be this little girl, God will always surprise me by showing that she's just as equal in Christ as any other. 

"Four o'clock in the morning, my mind is filled with a thousand thoughts of you" hahaha gosh this becoming quite a hazardous thing to do, posting song lyrics as my blog post starters which relate aptly to the time. I assure you seriously that I did not plan to wait till the time just so I can include that in. But today was a day where I met a lot of friends after not seeing or hearing anything from them for a long time. Strangely it had to be all on today. So the list ran something like primary school friends, army friend, former church friends, friend that I did project with two years ago, and friend from some church. With the passage of time and everything that happens in each others' life, it's happy to know that somewhere out there people are finding life worthy for them to live as well as I do.

And after the brief catch-up, it takes me some frantic Facebooking to verify everything about what the other person is doing now, maybe leave a half-sincere message to go out for a meal sometime, great for the chance meet-up, blah blah. And it's almost a travesty when I discover that we aren't even Facebook friends. Which really gets me thinking sometimes about the fragility of human relationships? I remembered not too long ago that you were crying on my shoulders over something which seemed really tragic at that time, but looking back now and seeing where it took you, it hardly mattered at all. I remembered that time when we did that club notebook thing where we filled it with mazes and short stories which we will take turns to write, hardly seems all that mature now. I remembered the lunch where we sat for hours and poured out everything that we had concerning our ideas of faith and what it meant to us, and now it's just hello new set of problems, different
seasons.

I do wonder if the other party goes through an equally thoughtful reminiscence of the old times like I do. Or, if at all, this should be accepted as part and parcel of growing up and getting old. Who would have thought that at that gangly prepubescent age, you would turn out so well-built. Who would have thought that you two will eventually get married. Things change, and people go through so many different seasons too. I don't know if that friendship that mattered quite a lot to me a few years ago still holds the same weight now.

Okay, sleep I go. Long day tomorrow. 

Doing what I do with the sec one and twos sometimes gives me a certain insight into what grabs their attention and what they find amusing. Whenever I study about postmodernism in university, the lecturers just love to say that "you generation are literally born into the postmodern age". Which is kinda true, we were at the cusp of huge technology changes and Internet and iPods and iPhones; everything is configured to be visual and instantaneous. But sometimes I have to disagree with the lecturers, because the youths that I hang out with ten years my junior are even more crazy than I am about instantaneous visuals. If I'm borned into that age, then they ARE the postmodern age. But enough about postmodernity conditions, here are three Internet stuff that I've come across in my two or three years being a cell leader for that age group. Each one is as buffling and obscure and it's mystifying why they are crazy over it at their respective ages.

• Charlie the Unicorn

I distinctly remember being extremely new to the 13-14 year old age group and I'm trying to fit into their age and understand what rocks their boat. And it wasn't until Samantha and Celine found out OH MY GOSH YOU DUNNO CHARLIE THE UNICORN and then they happily and jumpily and crazily showed me this, that they really felt as though they successively inducted me into their lives. For the life of me I still don't know what this is about, and watching it again now I would point at it and say po-mo! But three years ago it seemed like the biggest thing on earth and I was Charlie the unbelieving unicorn to them, because I was a skeptic and old man and pragmatic and grumpy. And they kept threatening to bounce on me each time I refused to do their nefarious biddings, and I can't remember how I endured all the "Chaaaarrrlieeee" chants they did!

• Miss Swan

This one was a year later, and supposedly a year wiser when it comes to these things, but Andrea and Eunice demanded that they borrow my laptop this instant to watch this, because some teacher in their school showed them Miss Swan and they wanted to watch the rest of the series! There are many other Miss Swan misadventures, you can watch it if you like this kind of humour, but it proved as bad a idea as Charlie the unicorn because for about two months after that, they were speaking in Miss Swan's bumbling accent. Jolene and I will ask them questions to Bible study and they answered in Miss Swan speak, and when we get annoyed they'll mock sob and "where did the love go"! Gets me all irked up, but hard to stay annoyed for long because right after that they will laugh like crazy and it's impossible not to share their joy at Miss Swan. 

• Nyan Cat

This is the most recent, and arguably most annoying! Courtesy of Si Xuan, because I've heard of it but I don't know what is this cat thing so she showed me the website. It's just the Nyan Cat flying through space, and the music looped to infinity to irritate people! Okay the tune is catchy for the first ten seconds, and anything beyond that is agony. And if you go to the website you can apparently Nyan for many seconds and you can post that score on Twitter, but it's essentially just letting the browser sit there for hours and chalk up a respectable count while listening to the looped song! I have no idea how something as simple as this can be so annoying, and I have no idea why would the world all over love such things! Anyway Si Xuan says she wants to nyan at me tomorrow, I don't know how this will turn out. 

There-there-there-go! Miss Swan style.

Perhaps it will be good for me if I explain my absence from this blog and also absence from Singapore last weekend! Kuching did me great, being able to get out of Singapore and totally ignore all school/church work for a while. Of course that had its consequences, because now I'm struggling to play keep-up with all my module readings and books. But it was a good trip, the brass band was up there to support with various playing engagements, and I was up there as admin guy or photographer or worship leader (one which I had to readily volunteer to justify me being up there heh). Caught up with the old friends, most of whom are like the second or third time that I'm meeting them only, but they are so jubilant at my arrival in Kuching again and I'm just warmed by their hospitality. Made new friends too, next time I see them I've gotta get more stuff.

Elsewhere, I am absolutely dying in my school work. I have many many Victorian literature to read, the novels are brilliantly written, just that I am a slow reader and unfortunately I do not have time on my side to savor each book. And I regret to say that the tutorial for one of the lit modules was absolutely horrendous. It was a presentation on Wuthering Heights, the guy was speaking in English, his choice of words were a little upmarket but no problem I knew most of the meanings of his vocabulary, he had no foreign accents, he spoke quite fluently, just that for the life of me I couldn't understand head to tail what concept or theme or idea he was trying to bring forth. He went on and on about some abstractions which I totally do not see any link at all to the novel, and it got so bad that to hide my obvious jaw dropping what-is-this-nonsense, I had to pretend to refer to the novel here and there, scribble some notes. When he finished I half expected the professor to exclaim in bewilderment too. But nope, the whole class began to critique positively on his presentation, and they were similarly talking in English but I just couldn't understand what they are trying to debate about!! I mean, it can't be just me right? There was not a thing I understood and I sat there like an idiot grasping at things that were whizzing above my head but never catching it. I have no idea how on earth I am going to sit for the mid-term test next week. 

Will be on a plane and flying to Kuching in less than 12 hours, and I don't really know why I am going on this trip. Haha the bandsmen are going up to support them with a funfair that they're going to have, and Daniel sort of just asked if I wanted to go and I was free either way so I just said yes. But it was an opportunity that I can't have said no to also, been there two years ago and was richly blessed by the people there, and have quite a few friends there whom I simply cannot not visit. Is it wrong to go for personal reasons then!? Hahaha but I will be admin guy and photographer.

It's only the end of week 3 in school and I feel like I am severely behind work! Gosh how did it end up like this. 

I love my literature classes. I really do. I don't write as well as I should, and I don't read as much as I should, but I love the way how I can sit in class and listen about the vastly different comments on a text or film or image or whatever we're given to analyse. It's the lit classes that throw me completely off my comfort zone. When I walk into a geography module at the start of the term, I already know what to expect. Probably because I've been through more geog classes than most people so after a while you know the scopes of research and academia that goes into urban cities, development, tourism, economy, etc. But my lit classes are a colossal mystery prior to the first lecture. The module names go "Psychoanalysis" and "Tragedy" and "16/17/18/19/20th Century" and I will be okayyy so what happened centuries before my time, and all the concepts are way too philosophical for me to comprehend in a single day.

And somehow everyone seems to know it better than I do, they exchange insightful critiques and complicated verbose that happen all above my head and I'm grasping at thin air. I sit there like a blubbering idiot wondering what are the books I need to read to be able to present dialectics like they could. Whatever that I want to say I'm always hesitant to eject, because I constantly think that it smacks of high school touch-and-go tripe which barely scratches the surface. But I've also learnt that there really is no condemnation and shame in my lit classes. They kinda like building up and adding onto what the previous comment was, so I try to make sure that I speak up among the first few hahaha so that whatever I banal stuff I say establishes the ground and then people build on for me and they'll quote me "like what Guan You said earlier"! Or else I will propose outrageous ideas, mainly because I don't really have much else to add, and so I go on and question whether that character is bisexual. Then there will be this huge debate for or against that.

Which brings to mind how I walked today into the smallest and most intimate lit tutorial I've ever had thus far. The immediate trouble was that all of them seemed to be lit majors and they apparently know each other, so I kinda just hid in my corner acting all smug and mighty because I really didn't know anyone in that class. Okay to be truthful it really felt like one of those book clubs! There were only like ten people, and the venue was the prof's office, which was cramped with wooden bookshelves towering all over the place and there were stacks of Penguin Classics in each shelf. Tell me if this doesn't seem like one of those quaint book attics and all of us were packed into this tiny abscess discussing Victorian authors. But for the nice people and new friends that I've met, it was worth the shoulder-to-shoulder squeeze. I highly suspect that this is one of the tutorials which I really cannot bluff my way through, and already they are imposing their imprints everywhere. I mean, it's one thing to enjoy Great Expectations, but I get a little bit scared when they gush in girly-speak "I lurrrrve Dickens". Heh but that's another post for another time. Right now I can't wait for next week's book club.

I don't really know what is it that I want to bring across in this post. 

Today I found out that I actually can teach guitar entirely in Mandarin-speak! Never ever thought that I would be walking down this path, and this is definitely one of my better achievements for this year! Just taken up a new guitar tuition job for this three ladies that I have never met before, and the only caveat in the job description was that they requested for the lessons to be conducted in Mandarin and that they want to learn worship songs in Mandarin too. My knowledge in that area is severely limited to as many of the handful of times I have assisted Chinese Corps with their praise and worship segment, and even then I cannot remember the songs that they introduced me to! The worship songs I know in Mandarin are all the ones that have been translated from their English counterparts. 

So it was with some trepidation that I'm taking on this job, and possibly continuing it for the next few months or so. I had to Google Translate last night for specific nouns like music note, chord, guitar string, metronome, tuner, octave haha oh my it took me quite a bit of time just to memorize all that! But I thank God that I lasted through the entire hour plus plus with barely an English word muttered, apart from all the music notes like C sharp heh there's no Mandarin alternative to that right?? Happy for the new friends made, and I'm determined to learn more Mandarin worship songs. This reminds me strongly of leading that Indonesian/Malay praise song at Malaysian Camp. Cool, my worship ministry is going multi-lingual. 

Hahaha 1.15am now and it's so apt to sing "it's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now..."! It's on my repeated playlist for a while because I like the harmony for that song. And nope, I am not deliberately holding out till 1.15am just so that I can be cheesy and include that lyric in. But yeah, anything beyond this time and it will be what Joanna would term an "odd hour" because I've been sleeping at 5am so much in the past three months! And I don't think my body clock ever adjusted back from the crazy summer holidays sleep circadian. I have friends in university who still keep telling me that three four months after not meeting, I still have that same dazed sleepy look on my face like I'm constantly tired. Nahh I think they meant to say I have small eyes. Or my slight-curly messy hair is giving me that dream look. 

But I really feel like I can function and operate best at night. I plain cannot study much in the day, and at night my brain activates some spark plug somewhere and my thoughts go into some whirlpool. Haha I kinda like how my room and laptop and seat is my recess and my silo for all the crazy things that happen in my head at night. I think whole universes are being borned and stars are smashing and creating new planets and whatnot this instant now. It's crazy, and I really should go write a book or something. 

Right now I am reading John Donne and Christopher Marlowe. Not the best things to read at a quarter after one because of blank verses and out-of-my-era English and Elizabethan tragedy and outrageous conceits. 

This is the one thousandth post for this blog! Well, at least according to the counter on Blogger, and barring any drafts that are not posted or any unaccounted for entries. This is a milestone to reach, and keeping in mind that it took a relatively long time to reach this many posts! First began this blog waaay back in 2004 when I was still actively playing Neopets hahaha and when I still have dial-up connection at home just to get on the Internet. But yup, it's a miracle that I'm still posting here with the advent of Twitter and Facebook and all sorts of other social media! Feels like this blog is a dinosaur in comparison to instantaneous, on-the-go updates at Twitter.

And I am constantly reminded that this virtual space is always a simulacrum of a diary equivalent if I do keep one? I know I am literally borned into the postmodern society where everything is based on the immediate visual, and sometimes it's hard to perceive that I have this archive of thoughts and feelings collected over the years in some, err, ethereal space. Intangible, yet constantly accessible, haha it blows my mind. I would be really sad if somehow the main blog server crashed or I accidentally deleted this blog, and I lose everything that I have written here. Should I back up my blog entries hahaha???

Elsewhere, I know that I am in some form of technological trouble when I start to think that all the display screens of electronic devices are all touchscreen! For those who have yet know I recently jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, and I'm getting very used to the entire "what I want I poke at it" concept. It's really cool and quite intuitive, except that this morning I was on my old iPod and I wanted it to repeat the song it just played and I stupidly jabbed at the screen several times before realizing that it is not touchscreen! Of course the iPod worked with the clicker wheel, and I felt like a fool. But yup, I remember the days when mp3 players came in 128MB and 256MB and 512MB, and then the iPod came along and revolutionized everything, and now iPhone and everything is so radical and different and technology changed every quotidian habit. Although sometimes I think that I am the one regressing technology, and I totally understand why my mother has huge pains and troubles with her new touchscreen phone too. Think my sister and I are both taking turns reprimanding the mother what to do and what not to do just to get her to call/SMS. The tables are turned now. Wahaha. 

Posting this as I just managed to navigate my way to where i wanna go at NUH! I have a class here in another hour, and honestly this place is a labyrinth with all the different departments and whatnot. Yup, school have started for me, after months of binning around and being able to wake up as late as I want everyday heh. I have two literature modules covering the Renaissance and the 19th century, two geography modules, and the NUH one is reproductive health hahaha.

And have been busy with many church things! We were at a leaders' retreat last week, then had a funfair yesterday, and was at Gracehaven for their service. Funfair in particular was fun! My cell group probably didn't require as much preparations as the other cells, but it was still a lot of work!

I'm eavesdropping on the conversations of these two NUH staff ladies who're sitting beside me for lunch now. One is attending a course on benefits of carbohydrates, and the other just came down for lunch from a busy emailing day. Feel so medical scientific gaargh. Okay I shall not neglect this blog space. But my next post is my thousandth I think haha

One thing that is beginning to irk me (and probably bugger at myself to do something) is seeing some of the youths being a bit too liberal with vulgarities and swear words on social media. It's probably not too common to open my Facebook and Twitter and be greeted with words that probably should be symb*lized or striked or in any form of censure suitable. And all the more disturbing if they are friends from my church and I know them well enough and I really really don't see the need for such strong words. Well, "strong words" is probably an euphemism hehh.

Well I definitely would understand, and in all honesty and admissions of guilt I have cursed and swore and fallen more times than I should into that trap before. I came from an all-boys primary and secondary school, and boys of course hold nothing back from swearing! Well okay not so terribly in primary school. We were still measurably innocent, so we will play games like "bus first bus second then bus what?", or there's the "sack A sack B then sack what?" hahaha! I can't believe I used to think "sexy" was one of those huge vulgarities! Then of course, someone in the class will eventually learn some swank Hokkien curse, so we upgraded our pronunciation games to "translate chicken white in Chinese". And whenever some unsuspecting guy says it, either unknowingly or he really does not know the meaning, there will be a huge uproar ORH HOR HE SAID SEXY ORH HOR HE SAID A BAD WORD.

If saying "sexy" was the worst sacrilege and the biggest sin in primary school, then I wished you could hear the kind of language that we use to converse in secondary school! It was a marvel how we can use the infamous "fuck" as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronouns if we can wrangle it, hahaha you name the parts of speech and we'll fit it somewhere somehow into the sentence. We had teachers hauling us up for tongue slips and forcing us to look up the word in the dictionary and copying word-for-word the definitions listed in it. We heard stories of certain individuals who dared utter as tiny a breathy hint of some fricative "ffffuuu" in front of the principal or the discipline master, and he was forever an untouchable legend. Christian or not, churched or unchurched, it was the only true way of talking to a fellow teenager really. You simply have to include some form of it somewhere in your speech.

Then we all graduated and entered junior college, and all of a sudden all forms of swearing and cussing and vulgarities died to a minimum. Because there was this huge jump from an all-boys school environment into a co-ed (girls!!!!!!) one, somewhere along the way we all came to some tacit agreement that we cannot appear uncouth or vulgar. We pepper our converses instead with mild versions like "bloody" or "effing" or "fishcake". Kind of like a regression really, everyone became hyper-conscious of being cultured and civilized. But the saving grace for those sailors at heart was during literature class, when we learnt that "fuck" and "prick" and "cunt" and all sorts of other swear words were perfectly acceptable. I remember going through a poem or novel or something that utilized "fuck" in an elegant way! And the huge topic about sex, considered too taboo and obscured from all manners of discussion with girls in our presence, well what can I say? Hahaha we discussed poems aloud about "having a good bonk" and "getting that girl to fucking open her legs" and "gay kinky sex"! Never ever possible with mainstream curriculum, but I had really good lit teachers who made the words come alive, and we will giggle and gasp but deep down we were probably all raging hormones.

And then it was time to serve the nation in the army. Haha needless to say, all those years repressed in JC were like an unleashed demon. We would all angrily and hot-bloodedly join in dissing some commander for some unfair punishment. It was back to an all boys environment again. And there was no adequate way to not reprieve those inner angst because we all resented the crap that we had to go through. I think my commanders thought it the way that if you don't swear at your soldiers, then it becomes some nanny army. Within ourselves it was no different, we've probably each been swore at in our faces more times than we could count, and so for our daily conversations with each other we included more swear word varieties and more degrading adjectives! Kinda helps that you have people from all sorts of background, so the JC kids will teach the ITE people really uncommon English adjectives like "imbecile" or "nincompoop", and the ITE people will explain the Hokkien slang they just used. Hahaha like a social exchange, hope I didn't just pigeon-holed society into classes but that was the personal case for myself.

Then you might ask, so where's the Christian in me? I know kinda well that there's some form of discipline that I should upkeep, like I cannot really have parents going after me because I swear like a sailor in front of their children in church. And I know really well too, when I'm placed outside of the church environment into school or army, the temptations to just fit in with everybody's conversation and peppering my speeches with a little "fuck" will go unnoticed because everyone is saying it. But I also know very very well, and this is for the record and for my own strong reminder, that no one has ever vilified me for NOT saying the f-word. A couple of times I will get some of my army mates saying I seldom swear and I am very holy and when I swear it means I am really angry. That always convicts and evicts me, because I know I swear more often than I should. But no one has ever forced me to swear with them involuntarily.

For me the temptation to swear like any other guy, it is always there. For girls maybe not hahaha, but I may be generalizing and going down a slippery slope here. But yes, I know very very well that a good tree should bear good fruit, and I know that the tongue is a fire, and I know that out of the same mouth shouldn't come curses and praises. And now that I'm a lot older and knowing that I hold more responsibilities than most people would in church, I really am ashamed sometimes of not keeping my own tongue in check. And I've been in youth leadership since the later years of secondary school, so all the more no reason for me not to control and be disciplined. I cannot swear outside of church and go into church onstage and lead worship, I cannot tell my cell members not to swear but I do it frequently outside.

Kinda convoluted, but I understand perfectly why some people swear all the time, but but but I also understand perfectly for a need to not even swear at all. I would speak firsthand that it is not an easy temptation to battle. And it doesn't help that it is the human mind's innate instinct to swear! A long while ago I was reading Steven Pinker and his analysis on why people swear, and he kinda argued that it is in our nature to swear all the time and it is an emotional need to express something, good or bad. The reason why I didn't bother censuring all the "fucks" in this blog post also is that I think "fuck" is just normal a word as any, it's only the intent that we give behind it that makes it taboo and omitted from mainstream press. I don't want to give the devil victory just because it is an unacceptable word to use, but at the same time I don't want to give the devil victory too because I have every choice not to use that word too. It's a double-edged sword haha I think it may be too confusing for this time now, but yup, bottom line is, to worship in Christ gives me no reason to swear.

This is a confusing post. Now what do I do to encourage others to do likewise?